hearthstone Major Balance Changes Coming to Hearthstone

[Oxygen 446]

Blizzard have announced major balance changes to Hearthstone's Bonemare, Corridor Creeper, Patches, and Raza.

Blizzard have announced major balance changes to Hearthstone's Bonemare, Corridor Creeper, Patches, and Raza

With the year of the Mammoth coming to an end, Blizzard decided to do some house cleaning by hitting some of Hearthstone's most played cards. These updates will be live "next month" with Update 10.2. If you have just crafted these cards, fear not: you'll be able to disenchant them at full Dust value for 2 weeks following the nerfs changes.

Blizzard

Bonemare has been quite strong in both constructed and Arena. It has a big, immediate impact on the board, and since it’s neutral, it’s been finding its way into a wide variety of decks.

Increasing its mana cost by 1 will give opponents more time to utilize powerful late-game cards to counteract Bonemare’s effect on the board.

Bonemare was the 7th more played card according to hsreplays. As an affordable common rarity card, it was reigning over arena as much as constructed, providing a powerful Battlecry effect that could be used offensively or defensively, or both. The card's stats themselves weren't too shabby either, technically resulting in a 9/9 Taunt for 7 with the potential to deal 4 damage instantly provided you had a minion on board, which wasn't all too harsh of a condition to meet. I don't think I need to expand on why this is a reasonable change.

Blizzard

Due to the way that Corridor Creeper’s mana cost reduction works, it can cause big swings based on whether or not it happens to be in-hand at the start of the game.

Since it’s a very strong neutral card, Corridor Creeper has been played by a lot of classes. By lowering its attack, we reduce the overall swing potential and power level of the card, but still allow players who draw it early to benefit from having a low-cost minion to play when the game state is ideal.

Most played card in the game, seeing about twice as much play as the next most played card. Quite underrated upon its initial reveal, too, rated in the bottom 30%. Corridor Creeper is the only card from KnC seeing a nerf, showing its ridiculous potential that helped it find a spot in basically every aggro and a good number of midrange decks, including Zoolock, Token shaman, Aggro druid, Pirate warrior, Secret mage, and so on. This change is certainly warranted, but I can't help but feel that this is a bit heavy handed, unlike Bonemare's. Would a 3/5 or a 4/4 have been a bit more reasonable?

Blizzard

As we move closer to the new Hearthstone Year, we had some concerns about allowing Patches to remain in his current state after moving out of Standard. Patches’ strength has caused almost every class to add some Pirates just to benefit from him, and his early game power forces control decks to include a good answer to him. This change should give Wild players more flexibility when building their decks.

Removing Charge will lower his power level, ensuring he shows up in fewer decks and allowing opposing players some additional time to respond to Patches, making him less “in charge” of the early game.

Patches is a controversial card that gave birth to the "pirate package" and contributed to the general rise of Pirate warrior, one of the most hated aggro deck ever developed. Nowadays, it sees play in most aggro deck along Southsea Captain for a free 2 points of damage, and sometimes more if it manages to survive. This nerf will most likely result in aggro decks dropping the Captain, and in Patches seeing no play whats however. The removal of charge makes Patches even worse to draw. Rest in peace.

Blizzard

In a similar vein to Patches the Pirate, we had some concerns about allowing Raza to remain in his current state forever. Raza is currently an important combo piece along with Shadowreaper Anduin, and can lead to games that rely heavily on drawing him by turn 5. Adjusting his Battlecry will lower his overall power level when combined with Shadowreaper Anduin in Standard, and keep his power level reasonable in Wild as we prepare for the new Hearthstone Year.

Raza defined Highlander/Kazakus/Shadowreaper priest by giving it a ridiculously powerful win condition in the form of a discounted hero power. This nerf is unlikely to kill the deck, but is likely to dent its win rates by some 3-4%. With priest weakened like this, will Cubelock become unstoppable?

How do you feel like these changes will impact the metagame? Do you feel they are fair?

[Aglommon 21]

That Patches nerf was long overdue, people complained about it all year long in 2017 and they were right to. Raza really became a pain when DK Anduin was introduced, so it's nice to see it being nerfed a little. But damn, Blizzard was slow to nerf those.

Bonemare's nerf is acceptable and understandable.

They killed Creeper, but I don't mind, this kind of card is stupid, both in ladder and arena.

Well, that gives people some dust before the next expansion I guess, that's nice.

 

 

Edited January 29, 2018 by Aglommon

[leapingshadow 50]

I hope the new balance year for hearthstone with the rotations going out should mean a lot more balanced and diverse metagame for hearthstone. Gadgetzan really has had such an adverse affect on deckbuilding for way too long and I can't wait to never see Jade Druid on ladder again. That deck single handedly made me and a few of my friends just give up Hearthstone. I feel like Un'Goro, Frozen Throne and Kobolds have a much better balance approach than some other expansions.

[Caldyrvan 377]

Besides the Bonemare nerf I say they are just idiots or slow, or both :D

But I have a golden Corridor Creeper, looks like I will get a free legend or 4 epics I need :D

@leapingshadow with these nerfs we will see jade druid a lot more again, I guess. At least until it rotates out.

[Migol 433]

"What took so long?"

-My reaction to the patches nerf.

[Drachar 45]

While I get the problem with the whole "pirate package" I think the nerf on Patches is a bit harsh. Otherwise good changes.

[Synesthesy 114]

I don't understand the last nerfs. Raza and Patches are going to leave standard soon, so this nerf is about Wild.

While Reno Priest is the strongest deck (even if Vicious Syndicate say that the strongest wild deck is Aggro Paladin, followed by Cubelock and another paladin), the Wild meta show lots of differents deck and differents classes. I don't think that Raza is a problem here, is only a (very) strong deck. And why nerf patches? To be sure that Warrior doesn't have a strong deck even in wild? Or to have a meta only of warlock? Or maybe a meta of face deck, again and again?

I don't understand :|

[Breadd 13]

The thing is, yes, almost all aggro decks did run the creeper, pirate package, and yes, it was absurdly strong sometimes. But what i always liked about these aggro decks is that you can have some kind of chance against control to close out the game before they can stabilize. Now you have to bet your luck with drawing Keleseth early...

And as much as i appreciate these nerfs, as much i miss some tweaking on other dumb and boring cards (especially jade idol) from control decks.

[VaraTreledees 138]

No prince 2 nerfs and no cube lock nerfs.  Oh goody.  Cube lock is honestly too strong, especially without razakus priest to check it, and prince 2 is arguably more poorly designed then patches.  Oh well.

[Laragon 269]

The timing of these is really odd... like everything they do it is painfully late and heavy handed enough that 2 our of the 4 cards are now worthless (patches and creeper). Raza might survive at 1 mana, but he certainly loses a LOT in the mid game that way.

[Yevhen 18]

Bonemare: unexpected for me, but reasonable. But does not really matter, because for me around 60% of times game result can be seen by turn 7, moreso by turn 8 (unless RNGeneral takes over the wartime rules).

Creeper: totally had to be done. when beast hunter got the board control by turn 3, and i killed them all, he got this out and gave it charge. Totally overwhelming power.

Patches: strange that they did it just now, but maybe because there just was some sense in his charge. Not sure that this way he is better, because mage will just kill him, and then what?

Raza: ... ... ... +manacost or -power? Well...... yeah. Never got shadowreaper, but played against this combo more than once. Won only one time, by pure random luck. Simply got him down before he could make good use of it. At least this puts some limit to his ability to damage. BTW, wasn't there some other card with similar effect to hero power?

[Yridaa 490]

HS has traditionally suffered from unbalance because of fast plays. It started with cards like Warsong Commander. Blizzard figured out that Charge minions are typically too powerful and either nerfed those or removed some Charge abilities. This moved on to Ragnaros and now other cards like Bonemare and Patches. It is also the reason Rogue is so successful with both Prince 2 and Vilespine Slayer.

 

Blizzard mentioned quite a lot of times they hate cards/decks that require you to work around proactively instead of reactively (i.e. the old Druid tree + roar, you just had to make sure you had enough armor or a few taunts to counter it before it was played). But then they keep introducing the very same type of cards they hate, complain, then nerf it.

 

Guess what's gonna happen in 1-2-3 expansions?

 

 

#justblizzardthings

[SMOrcMan 76]

Interesting set of nerfs. Honestly some of these nerfs seem way too late. This is the type of stuff that should've been fixed a while ago. Corridor creeper nerf seems like a bit too much to me, but who knows.

[MZLICH 43]

lol RIP most of metas but s... they didn't do anything about guldan hero.. 

[Hanz39 53]

I expect them to put a mana limit to recruit cards of warlocks not those useless nerfs, if they stop those Voidlord spam at turn 6 will be useful not those nerf at pratically Wild cards only.

Bonemare nerf is ok a bit late but ok the card is too powerful for 7 mana.

Corridor Creeper nerf is fine I guess but Warlocks (90% of the ladder) don't play it so who cares if it's nerfed, aggro lost patches that is much more important already, without pirate package what you use to discount it, but was already a useless card 5/5 or 2/5 is only a nerf to hunter more than anything, for Evolve shaman stats not matter you evolve it to 8 mana anyway

Patches nerf is just stupid nerfed right before going to Wild after years people complain about him, well done.

Raza nerf kill the DK Priest deck since you have no wincon even if you draw Velen so makes the purpose of the deck useless, you play Raza to OTK with Velen+Mind Blast for 20 damage at least now at best is 14 damage with Velen/Blast, and nobody leave Velen on board for a turn.

Edited January 30, 2018 by Hanz39

[Sikolik 5]

the nerf on corridor and patches in understandable but the raza thing i don't quite get. i mean it was like the counter to jade druid we needed. sure there was a one trick combo with velen. but every class and deck has a one trick combo lately so the raza nerf i find a bit too much. we need a nerf on cubelock aswell. i mean that combo come on

Edited January 30, 2018 by Sikolik

[Keizoku 185]

Too little, too late. Three of these cards should never have been printed and yet two were allowed to pollute Standard for far too long, killing them off now is as heavyhanded as it is overdue. But then again, considering Blizzard's nerf history, I'm not surprised at all.

The only reasonable thing in this mess is the Bonemare readjustment, which was a strong card before and will remain decently strong even at 8 mana.

[Taan 46]

Wait wait wait...timing and stuff aside. The MOST important question is:

Does Patches still says "IAM IN CHARRRRGE NOW!", when he enters the battlefield? Because he clearly isn't!

 

(besides, I always thought, that Patches might be to important for aggro-decks, to be nerved. These decks might get a lot of flag, but they are an integral part of any card game. The patches-nerf could put control even higher up in the meta...oh and I will still play Corridor Creeper in my Evolve-shaman without any doubt)

[jimmyp 0]

Hey all!

Just to confirm when viewing the below..

 These updates will be live "next month" with Update 10.2. If you have just crafted these cards, fear not: you'll be able to disenchant them at full Dust value for 2 weeks following the nerfs changes.

I bought the 2 card set yesterday (Shadowreaper Anduin & Raza the chained) - I have bought so many packs to get these, i just ended up spending my saved dust. I'm not too pleased about the changes to Raza but i fully understand why they have taken place. Because i bought the card yesterday, will i still be able to disenchant the card for full dust value? 

Also would the same apply to Shadowreaper Anduin as the cards are slightly linked? Or will the full disenchant value only be applied to Raza?

 

Thanks in advance guys - Safe travels. 

[Caldyrvan 377]

no idea what it is with you people using blue color text on a blue background. Missed a part of the post :D

As stated and as it was in the past with cards that got nerfed they could be disenchanted for the full dust value (e.g. Raza could be disenchanted for 1600 dust) once the patch that nerfs it goes live and then for 2 weeks after the nerf. 

Even though a nerf to one specific card might affect the relevance of other cards related to it they are not disenchantable for full dust value.

But I think there is no reason to see it that bad with Shadowreaper Anduin. It is still usable in other decks and even though not as powerful as in the dull razadin machinegun deck it's still a strong Legend imo.

Edited January 30, 2018 by Caldyrvan

[Demenzel 29]

1 hour ago, Caldyrvan said:

no idea what it is with you people using blue color text on a blue background. Missed a part of the post :D

Thats the blue post from blizz, you should see a black background...

About the changes...

Bonemare was needed, it have to much power, as well corridor (may be they went to far with this one).

The nerf for Raza and Patches are necesaries, specially now that they are going passing to wild, so they dond disrupt the standar meta so bad (just a month or something like that).

[BrightwingMain 26]

I was rather short on dust at the start of this expansion so i made Creeper and Patches based aggro decks, I guess there being cheap tier 1 decks was too much for Blizzard. Like seriously, Cubelock is so expensive and Jade Druid is too, especially considering the deck will probably start running Medivh + Kun package again after aggro ceases to exist.

[Synesthesy 114]

10 minutes ago, BrightwingMain said:

I was rather short on dust at the start of this expansion so i made Creeper and Patches based aggro decks, I guess there being cheap tier 1 decks was too much for Blizzard. Like seriously, Cubelock is so expensive and Jade Druid is too, especially considering the deck will probably start running Medivh + Kun package again after aggro ceases to exist.

I thought it too. One of my problem is that I play almost only wild, so I invested a lot of dust in highlander priest, because I thought it would always be playable in wild. Now, they are using this nerves to balance wild... or to force player like me to buy newer cards?

One of the reason of standard rotation is to eliminate strong old cards to make newer deck shine. So, why wild meta is not full of secret paladin or mech mage, but is dominated by highlander priest and cubelock just like standard?

[Keizoku 185]

59 minutes ago, Synesthesy said:

So, why wild meta is not full of secret paladin or mech mage, but is dominated by highlander priest and cubelock just like standard?

Peerc Rewop!

[Caldyrvan 377]

There is something I really hate about the creeper nerf.

I don't really care much about to be honest, it was too strong and seen everywhere and deserved some adjustment, but it was a strong epic in my collection I could use it if I want, now I (we) have just one more useless(more or less) high rarity card in our card collections.

Edited January 30, 2018 by Caldyrvan