From the looks of it, Hearthstone's balance team took the community's feedback and just put it into the balance changes without reprocessing the rationale between the feedback.
The changes look very familiar.
Deck of Lunacy is changed from 2 Mana to 4 Mana. Many YouTubers asked for this, and their argument is that 4 Mana will slow Mage down. Sword of the Fallen is changed from 3 Durability to 2 Durability. Even more people and YouTubers asked for this than Deck of Lunacy. Jandice Barov is changed from 5 Mana to 6 Mana. I remember Regiskillbin called this exact nerf in one of his videos. The Watch Posts have -1 Health. This one did not really come from the community, because if I'm not mistaken, the community asked for -1 Attack instead of -1 Health.
Now, taking community's feedback at face value and putting it into balance changes directly is NOT a good idea. I know this because I was a Clash Royale player. Back then, Supercell asked the community for a balance change idea. They asked whether they should buff Archer or Dart Goblin. Archer needed the buff, because it was being overshadowed by Spear Goblin. However, the community asked for Dart Goblin's buff instead. Dart Goblin ended up being OP and Supercell had to nerf Dart Goblin in a way that did not revert the buff. It was a disaster. Supercell never asked for community's feedback for balance changes ever again.
Now, that aside, let's talk about balance changes and why it didn't work on Mage and Paladin.
Well, the reason is simple: They didn't hit the OP part of the cards.
People say Deck of Lunacy is OP because it's now consistent. I highly disagree with that argument. IMO, the reason why Deck of Lunacy is OP is pretty simple: "There is a spell. What if the spell costs 3 Mana cheaper?" Get it? Deck of Lunacy is OP because it simply gives too much value for its cost. It's Incanter's Flow, but it discounts by 3 instead of 1, and pre-nerf, it was at the same Mana cost.
Now, why was Deck of Lunacy not playable before the rotation? IMO, the reason why it wasn't playable back then is because before rotation, the meta was a LOT more aggressive. Every single class except Mage and Priest had a playable aggro deck. Chance of winning by turn 5 is a lot higher. Doing nothing was a lot more punishing back then. Even at 2 Mana, Deck of Lunacy was a lot harder to play, because of the risk of doing nothing. It doesn't really have anything to do with consistency.
Now, why did the nerf not work? IMO, the reason is because it's still very valuable at 4 Mana. Remember, No Minion Mage is COMPLETELY FINE without Deck of Lunacy. No Minion Mage without Deck of Lunacy has only like 5% lower win rate than No Minion Mage with Deck of Lunacy (NOTE: The statistics here are BEFORE the nerf). Mage can totally defend itself for 2 turns no problem. They should've hit the value generated by the card instead.
Sword of the Fallen is OP because it tutors and casts OP Paladin Secrets. Paladin's Secrets are OP in value. Avenge is a 1 Mana guaranteed +3/+2, Oh My Yogg! is a 1 Mana Counterspell. A lot of them are OP for 1 Mana, but, they're most of the time a waste of draw and space in your hand. Most Rogues don't really play Secrets unless they add cards to the hand like Dirty Tricks and Plagiarize, and it's for the same reason. Paladin's Secrets' weakness is that they are a waste of space in the hand. Sword of the Fallen completely removes all aforementioned weaknesses. Paladin doesn't have to hold the Secrets in hand, and therefore, they don't become a waste of draw and space in hand.
-1 Durability does not really mean anything. Paladin does not really care about casting 1 less Secret, because they've already maximized the value by bypassing the limitation of the 2 Secrets. They should've done one of these two things instead:
1. Change the tutor ability of Sword of the Fallen. Instead of drawing and casting it, the weapon should either draw the Secret to the hand or cast the Secret from hand.
You analysis is pretty off base. Lunacy was trash before rotation because the pool of possible cards was too varied for competitive play, it’ll get worse as cards are added to the pool most likely. The nerf now makes it a 4 mana do nothing card. Not sure how effective that’ll be, personally I would have just changed the text to “change the spells in your deck to random spells that cost 3 less.” This removes the consistency but keeps the card intact. It doesn’t matter if the spells are reduced in costs if they’re totally useless to your deck. The sword nerf was pretty big. Each swing of that weapon resulted in 3-4 mana worth of value. The reason it was broken is because it was thinning your deck of bad draws and making the deck overall more consistent.
Totally agree with this. Like i said in my own thread about this stuff. You have a card like Deck of lunace that it sounds random and cost well a fair amount of mana, that card dont seem problematic until you realise that the spell pull is a lot more easy to manipulate right now and have more aggresive cards that also generate vale (like Orb) and old cards like A.Blast now have better chances of hit good minions so you can safely put your mouse over the enemy hero portrait without fear of get a really bad minion that may punish your actions. This remains me to a problem that we have in Shadowverse in the past with a archtype called Mysteria that was very balance around being a "kindof" tempo archtype but when they introduce direct damage finishers and hyper value card with cost reduction the deck suddenly transforms into the best deck of that moment.
Secret paladin is a little more complex of a problem. I belive there is multiple targets for nerf in this deck because Librams and Secrets are both 2 good mechanics that dont have any in work together. As i said in one of the Nerf threads: -1 durability is nothing because you dont want to cast all 3 secret in a row. You just want to fix some plays and keep the option of get a secret any time you need, open. Secret Libram or pure secret are both half aggro half tempo decks. The main goal is to make the oponent lose because of their own decisions when he avoids the secrets. Most paladin secrets by themself are pretty weak because they dont impact that much the game but when it comes to sudden impact this cards are actually really good. So they either nerf the secrets, nerfs how the sword works or the addrese the Libram cards and forces the archtype to become a "win early or lose late" kind of deck that can run out of gas.
You analysis is pretty off base. Lunacy was trash before rotation because the pool of possible cards was too varied for competitive play, it’ll get worse as cards are added to the pool most likely. The nerf now makes it a 4 mana do nothing card. Not sure how effective that’ll be, personally I would have just changed the text to “change the spells in your deck to random spells that cost 3 less.” This removes the consistency but keeps the card intact. It doesn’t matter if the spells are reduced in costs if they’re totally useless to your deck. The sword nerf was pretty big. Each swing of that weapon resulted in 3-4 mana worth of value. The reason it was broken is because it was thinning your deck of bad draws and making the deck overall more consistent.
Your change to lunacy doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t do anything positive if it just “transforms your spells into ones that cost 3 less.” It gives you no upside if you don’t reduce their cost further, or something else.
Taking your deck that you built to be good, and just transforming all your spells into completely random, weaker spells, wouldn’t be played if lunacy costed 0 mana. You not only remove value from your deck, but further more worsen it because you’re just rolling the dice on all the spells.
Your point about Deck of Lunacy being bad in Darkmoon Faire is contradicted by the present meta. Because you're correct - Lunacy Mage gets crushed by extreme aggression, Face Hunter is the current standard counter to the deck. But if it was that simple, the meta would have adapted towards all extreme aggression as people farmed Mages. Paladin works on aggro, which keeps aggro in check. Paladin being as strong as it is keeps aggro decks with a very popular bad matchup, meaning people are less likely to play it and Mage has better matchups that way. Likewise, the consistency of the cards you get from Lunacy is exactly why it's as strong as it is. You're correct that the discount is powerful, but a 3 mana discount always being placed on certain cards that are extremely powerful is why it matters at all. Furthermore, Incanter's Flow making the cards cost even LESS gives 4 to 5 free mana on semi-random cards that are already powerful. If the pool was as varied as it was in Darkmoon Faire, we'd be back at square one - a massive pool of garbage cards that you don't really want to play even when they're discounted is what held the card back. The pool is smaller, the spells on average more powerful, and therefore Deck of Lunacy is more insane.
All that to say - yeah Lunacy Mage crumples to aggro, but Paladin makes aggro worse so it's less of an issue now. So since the meta has less aggression, Mage does get a leg up. However, that wouldn't matter if Lunacy wasn't as consistent as it is. You're correct, from what appears to be happening, Mage needs to be hit again. The 2 mana nerf, while intense, doesn't address the problem Deck of Lunacy poses.
Also, I don't know if I agree with the conclusion you've come to outside of card analysis (where I myself am not totally confident), I don't think that the response from Blizzard in the form of these specific nerfs are them "doing what the community asked". Regis in particular wasn't requesting anything, he was making predictions, and that's what most community members do when they make videos like that. I think the reason the changes match the predictions is that they were made by people who understand how Blizzard makes these changes, and have a solid grasp on what might be good changes.
You analysis is pretty off base. Lunacy was trash before rotation because the pool of possible cards was too varied for competitive play, it’ll get worse as cards are added to the pool most likely. The nerf now makes it a 4 mana do nothing card. Not sure how effective that’ll be, personally I would have just changed the text to “change the spells in your deck to random spells that cost 3 less.” This removes the consistency but keeps the card intact. It doesn’t matter if the spells are reduced in costs if they’re totally useless to your deck. The sword nerf was pretty big. Each swing of that weapon resulted in 3-4 mana worth of value. The reason it was broken is because it was thinning your deck of bad draws and making the deck overall more consistent.
Your change to lunacy doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t do anything positive if it just “transforms your spells into ones that cost 3 less.” It gives you no upside if you don’t reduce their cost further, or something else.
Taking your deck that you built to be good, and just transforming all your spells into completely random, weaker spells, wouldn’t be played if lunacy costed 0 mana. You not only remove value from your deck, but further more worsen it because you’re just rolling the dice on all the spells.
It’s almost like that was the whole point. Lunacy was supposed to be a meme card, not competitive. This makes it more like renounce darkness and keeps people from targeting specific spells to be transformed into, which is the whole issue with the card right now. Your 1 mana brain freeze could change into a 7 mana negran slam (or whatever it’s called) or it could be chanced into a 5 mana deep freeze. I could have worded it better. More like “transform your spells in your deck to random ones and reduce their cost by 3.”
Your point about Deck of Lunacy being bad in Darkmoon Faire is contradicted by the present meta. Because you're correct - Lunacy Mage gets crushed by extreme aggression, Face Hunter is the current standard counter to the deck. But if it was that simple, the meta would have adapted towards all extreme aggression as people farmed Mages. Paladin works on aggro, which keeps aggro in check. Paladin being as strong as it is keeps aggro decks with a very popular bad matchup, meaning people are less likely to play it and Mage has better matchups that way. Likewise, the consistency of the cards you get from Lunacy is exactly why it's as strong as it is. You're correct that the discount is powerful, but a 3 mana discount always being placed on certain cards that are extremely powerful is why it matters at all. Furthermore, Incanter's Flow making the cards cost even LESS gives 4 to 5 free mana on semi-random cards that are already powerful. If the pool was as varied as it was in Darkmoon Faire, we'd be back at square one - a massive pool of garbage cards that you don't really want to play even when they're discounted is what held the card back. The pool is smaller, the spells on average more powerful, and therefore Deck of Lunacy is more insane.
All that to say - yeah Lunacy Mage crumples to aggro, but Paladin makes aggro worse so it's less of an issue now. So since the meta has less aggression, Mage does get a leg up. However, that wouldn't matter if Lunacy wasn't as consistent as it is. You're correct, from what appears to be happening, Mage needs to be hit again. The 2 mana nerf, while intense, doesn't address the problem Deck of Lunacy poses.
Also, I don't know if I agree with the conclusion you've come to outside of card analysis (where I myself am not totally confident), I don't think that the response from Blizzard in the form of these specific nerfs are them "doing what the community asked". Regis in particular wasn't requesting anything, he was making predictions, and that's what most community members do when they make videos like that. I think the reason the changes match the predictions is that they were made by people who understand how Blizzard makes these changes, and have a solid grasp on what might be good changes.
Well, you answered your own question yourself.
You indirectly asked "Why didn't the meta adapt towards extreme aggression?"
Then you said "Paladin keeps aggro in check"
Well, first of all, it keeps EVERYTHING in check. It's currently the most OP class.
Second, that's the point. You want to run aggro decks, but Paladin will counter you.
Third, even if you run aggro decks, you win against Mage, great, but you'll lose against everything else, especially Control Warlock that adapts to counter aggro by running lots of AoE like Fire Breather, Hellfire, and School of Spirits.
You analysis is pretty off base. Lunacy was trash before rotation because the pool of possible cards was too varied for competitive play, it’ll get worse as cards are added to the pool most likely. The nerf now makes it a 4 mana do nothing card. Not sure how effective that’ll be, personally I would have just changed the text to “change the spells in your deck to random spells that cost 3 less.” This removes the consistency but keeps the card intact. It doesn’t matter if the spells are reduced in costs if they’re totally useless to your deck. The sword nerf was pretty big. Each swing of that weapon resulted in 3-4 mana worth of value. The reason it was broken is because it was thinning your deck of bad draws and making the deck overall more consistent.
The "X mana do nothing" argument is almost always busted. Many claimed that Deck of Lunacy was a 2 mana do nothing, and now we know that the problem was not the mana cost, but rather the spell pool. Some even said that Luna's Pocket Galaxy was just a 7 mana do nothing. Hell, some people said that Kazakus, Golem Shaper would be bad because of the tempo loss of playing an understated 4 mana do nothing on curve. The same also happened with the now nerfed Watch Posts. You should never sleep on a card because it's impact isn't immediate.
These nerfs are barely out, you can't claim they didn't work yet. I didn't read anything saying that Deck of Lunacy shouldn't be competitive, just that it was too strong at turn 1 & 2. The deck will likely lose more often against it's bad matchups and will do a little worse in the favored matches. I personally don't think Deck of Lunacy is good for the game, but just because people are still playing the card doesn't mean the nerf was a failure.
Sword of the Fallen is still a very strong card. It will likely continue to be the best card in any paladin deck that runs secrets. I would personally like to see the meta develop for a couple more days before calling the nerf a failure, though I'm inclined to agree Paladin needed more. The goal of any nerf is simply to lower the cards/decks win rate, hopefully we see it.
As of typing this, according to HSReplay, Hunter has overtaken Paladin and Mage has dropped to 7th best class overall with No Minion Mage just above 50%. Just give it a little bit of time for things to play out.
This post is gold and so underrated, perfectly summarizes the balance changes effects and problems they created with perfect understanding of the game.
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Long years I have studied, now I serve the Lich KIng
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The balance changes have come out.
From the looks of it, Hearthstone's balance team took the community's feedback and just put it into the balance changes without reprocessing the rationale between the feedback.
The changes look very familiar.
Deck of Lunacy is changed from 2 Mana to 4 Mana. Many YouTubers asked for this, and their argument is that 4 Mana will slow Mage down. Sword of the Fallen is changed from 3 Durability to 2 Durability. Even more people and YouTubers asked for this than Deck of Lunacy. Jandice Barov is changed from 5 Mana to 6 Mana. I remember Regiskillbin called this exact nerf in one of his videos. The Watch Posts have -1 Health. This one did not really come from the community, because if I'm not mistaken, the community asked for -1 Attack instead of -1 Health.
Now, taking community's feedback at face value and putting it into balance changes directly is NOT a good idea. I know this because I was a Clash Royale player. Back then, Supercell asked the community for a balance change idea. They asked whether they should buff Archer or Dart Goblin. Archer needed the buff, because it was being overshadowed by Spear Goblin. However, the community asked for Dart Goblin's buff instead. Dart Goblin ended up being OP and Supercell had to nerf Dart Goblin in a way that did not revert the buff. It was a disaster. Supercell never asked for community's feedback for balance changes ever again.
Now, that aside, let's talk about balance changes and why it didn't work on Mage and Paladin.
Well, the reason is simple: They didn't hit the OP part of the cards.
Let's talk about Deck of Lunacy first.
People say Deck of Lunacy is OP because it's now consistent. I highly disagree with that argument. IMO, the reason why Deck of Lunacy is OP is pretty simple: "There is a spell. What if the spell costs 3 Mana cheaper?" Get it? Deck of Lunacy is OP because it simply gives too much value for its cost. It's Incanter's Flow, but it discounts by 3 instead of 1, and pre-nerf, it was at the same Mana cost.
Now, why was Deck of Lunacy not playable before the rotation? IMO, the reason why it wasn't playable back then is because before rotation, the meta was a LOT more aggressive. Every single class except Mage and Priest had a playable aggro deck. Chance of winning by turn 5 is a lot higher. Doing nothing was a lot more punishing back then. Even at 2 Mana, Deck of Lunacy was a lot harder to play, because of the risk of doing nothing. It doesn't really have anything to do with consistency.
Now, why did the nerf not work? IMO, the reason is because it's still very valuable at 4 Mana. Remember, No Minion Mage is COMPLETELY FINE without Deck of Lunacy. No Minion Mage without Deck of Lunacy has only like 5% lower win rate than No Minion Mage with Deck of Lunacy (NOTE: The statistics here are BEFORE the nerf). Mage can totally defend itself for 2 turns no problem. They should've hit the value generated by the card instead.
Now, we move on to Sword of the Fallen.
Sword of the Fallen is OP because it tutors and casts OP Paladin Secrets. Paladin's Secrets are OP in value. Avenge is a 1 Mana guaranteed +3/+2, Oh My Yogg! is a 1 Mana Counterspell. A lot of them are OP for 1 Mana, but, they're most of the time a waste of draw and space in your hand. Most Rogues don't really play Secrets unless they add cards to the hand like Dirty Tricks and Plagiarize, and it's for the same reason. Paladin's Secrets' weakness is that they are a waste of space in the hand. Sword of the Fallen completely removes all aforementioned weaknesses. Paladin doesn't have to hold the Secrets in hand, and therefore, they don't become a waste of draw and space in hand.
-1 Durability does not really mean anything. Paladin does not really care about casting 1 less Secret, because they've already maximized the value by bypassing the limitation of the 2 Secrets. They should've done one of these two things instead:
1. Change the tutor ability of Sword of the Fallen. Instead of drawing and casting it, the weapon should either draw the Secret to the hand or cast the Secret from hand.
2. Change the Secrets. Nerf Avenge and Oh My Yogg! in particular.
Those are my two cents about the balance changes. I'd love to know what you think about the balance changes.
You analysis is pretty off base. Lunacy was trash before rotation because the pool of possible cards was too varied for competitive play, it’ll get worse as cards are added to the pool most likely. The nerf now makes it a 4 mana do nothing card. Not sure how effective that’ll be, personally I would have just changed the text to “change the spells in your deck to random spells that cost 3 less.” This removes the consistency but keeps the card intact. It doesn’t matter if the spells are reduced in costs if they’re totally useless to your deck. The sword nerf was pretty big. Each swing of that weapon resulted in 3-4 mana worth of value. The reason it was broken is because it was thinning your deck of bad draws and making the deck overall more consistent.
Totally agree with this. Like i said in my own thread about this stuff. You have a card like Deck of lunace that it sounds random and cost well a fair amount of mana, that card dont seem problematic until you realise that the spell pull is a lot more easy to manipulate right now and have more aggresive cards that also generate vale (like Orb) and old cards like A.Blast now have better chances of hit good minions so you can safely put your mouse over the enemy hero portrait without fear of get a really bad minion that may punish your actions. This remains me to a problem that we have in Shadowverse in the past with a archtype called Mysteria that was very balance around being a "kindof" tempo archtype but when they introduce direct damage finishers and hyper value card with cost reduction the deck suddenly transforms into the best deck of that moment.
Secret paladin is a little more complex of a problem. I belive there is multiple targets for nerf in this deck because Librams and Secrets are both 2 good mechanics that dont have any in work together. As i said in one of the Nerf threads: -1 durability is nothing because you dont want to cast all 3 secret in a row. You just want to fix some plays and keep the option of get a secret any time you need, open. Secret Libram or pure secret are both half aggro half tempo decks. The main goal is to make the oponent lose because of their own decisions when he avoids the secrets. Most paladin secrets by themself are pretty weak because they dont impact that much the game but when it comes to sudden impact this cards are actually really good. So they either nerf the secrets, nerfs how the sword works or the addrese the Libram cards and forces the archtype to become a "win early or lose late" kind of deck that can run out of gas.
Your change to lunacy doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t do anything positive if it just “transforms your spells into ones that cost 3 less.” It gives you no upside if you don’t reduce their cost further, or something else.
Taking your deck that you built to be good, and just transforming all your spells into completely random, weaker spells, wouldn’t be played if lunacy costed 0 mana. You not only remove value from your deck, but further more worsen it because you’re just rolling the dice on all the spells.
Your point about Deck of Lunacy being bad in Darkmoon Faire is contradicted by the present meta. Because you're correct - Lunacy Mage gets crushed by extreme aggression, Face Hunter is the current standard counter to the deck. But if it was that simple, the meta would have adapted towards all extreme aggression as people farmed Mages. Paladin works on aggro, which keeps aggro in check. Paladin being as strong as it is keeps aggro decks with a very popular bad matchup, meaning people are less likely to play it and Mage has better matchups that way.
Likewise, the consistency of the cards you get from Lunacy is exactly why it's as strong as it is. You're correct that the discount is powerful, but a 3 mana discount always being placed on certain cards that are extremely powerful is why it matters at all. Furthermore, Incanter's Flow making the cards cost even LESS gives 4 to 5 free mana on semi-random cards that are already powerful. If the pool was as varied as it was in Darkmoon Faire, we'd be back at square one - a massive pool of garbage cards that you don't really want to play even when they're discounted is what held the card back. The pool is smaller, the spells on average more powerful, and therefore Deck of Lunacy is more insane.
All that to say - yeah Lunacy Mage crumples to aggro, but Paladin makes aggro worse so it's less of an issue now. So since the meta has less aggression, Mage does get a leg up. However, that wouldn't matter if Lunacy wasn't as consistent as it is.
You're correct, from what appears to be happening, Mage needs to be hit again. The 2 mana nerf, while intense, doesn't address the problem Deck of Lunacy poses.
Also, I don't know if I agree with the conclusion you've come to outside of card analysis (where I myself am not totally confident), I don't think that the response from Blizzard in the form of these specific nerfs are them "doing what the community asked". Regis in particular wasn't requesting anything, he was making predictions, and that's what most community members do when they make videos like that. I think the reason the changes match the predictions is that they were made by people who understand how Blizzard makes these changes, and have a solid grasp on what might be good changes.
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It’s almost like that was the whole point. Lunacy was supposed to be a meme card, not competitive. This makes it more like renounce darkness and keeps people from targeting specific spells to be transformed into, which is the whole issue with the card right now. Your 1 mana brain freeze could change into a 7 mana negran slam (or whatever it’s called) or it could be chanced into a 5 mana deep freeze. I could have worded it better. More like “transform your spells in your deck to random ones and reduce their cost by 3.”
Well, you answered your own question yourself.
You indirectly asked "Why didn't the meta adapt towards extreme aggression?"
Then you said "Paladin keeps aggro in check"
Well, first of all, it keeps EVERYTHING in check. It's currently the most OP class.
Second, that's the point. You want to run aggro decks, but Paladin will counter you.
Third, even if you run aggro decks, you win against Mage, great, but you'll lose against everything else, especially Control Warlock that adapts to counter aggro by running lots of AoE like Fire Breather, Hellfire, and School of Spirits.
The "X mana do nothing" argument is almost always busted. Many claimed that Deck of Lunacy was a 2 mana do nothing, and now we know that the problem was not the mana cost, but rather the spell pool. Some even said that Luna's Pocket Galaxy was just a 7 mana do nothing. Hell, some people said that Kazakus, Golem Shaper would be bad because of the tempo loss of playing an understated 4 mana do nothing on curve. The same also happened with the now nerfed Watch Posts. You should never sleep on a card because it's impact isn't immediate.
I love you Dreadsteed, I will never disenchant you!
These nerfs are barely out, you can't claim they didn't work yet. I didn't read anything saying that Deck of Lunacy shouldn't be competitive, just that it was too strong at turn 1 & 2. The deck will likely lose more often against it's bad matchups and will do a little worse in the favored matches. I personally don't think Deck of Lunacy is good for the game, but just because people are still playing the card doesn't mean the nerf was a failure.
Sword of the Fallen is still a very strong card. It will likely continue to be the best card in any paladin deck that runs secrets. I would personally like to see the meta develop for a couple more days before calling the nerf a failure, though I'm inclined to agree Paladin needed more. The goal of any nerf is simply to lower the cards/decks win rate, hopefully we see it.
As of typing this, according to HSReplay, Hunter has overtaken Paladin and Mage has dropped to 7th best class overall with No Minion Mage just above 50%. Just give it a little bit of time for things to play out.
This post is gold and so underrated, perfectly summarizes the balance changes effects and problems they created with perfect understanding of the game.
Long years I have studied, now I serve the Lich KIng