Hearthpwn

A Long-Awaited Meta Approaches

Blizzard announced Monday they will tame four of Hearthstone’s most powerful and popular cards, implementing in February a balance update long-desired by players and especially competitors.

Patches the Pirate, Raza the Chained, Corridor Creeper, and Bonemare all take a hit when the February patch goes live at an as-yet-undetermined date. For a limited time immediately after the update, players will be able to disenchant the cards for the amount of arcane dust it costs to create them.

The community seemed to welcome the nerfs, all of which were widely considered necessary in one form or another since the cards asserted themselves as dominant shortly after their release. The Patches the Pirate update alone will slow the meta, while other changes will make some of the most influential cards — and the archetypes built around them — less oppressive.

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Nemsy and Gul'dan Rejoice

But why the wait? And what about Warlock?

Patches the Pirate and Raza the Chained have dominated the meta for more than a year. The two have been around so long they rotate out of the Standard format when the next expansion goes live — leaving an undercurrent of sentiment that these changes are overdue. Wild players will certainly appreciate the long-term implications of a Patches without charge and a Highlander Priest without 30-plus points of burst damage, but professionals and competitors in general who have exerted so much energy playing and playing around these cards might feel slighted by the timing.

An ominous void in the nerf list: any of the cards in the Cubelock archetype. Warlock benefited most from the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion, spawning the powerful Cubelock archetype, which competes with both aggro and control opponents, soared to the top of tier lists, and receives a ban in a majority of competitive settings. In fact, aside from Exodia Mage, the most common strategies for defeating a Cubelock meta was applying insane pressure in turns 1 through 5 (with the help of Patches) and bursting Gul'dan down with a zero-mana Shadowreaper Anduin hero power. I thought Dark Pact was a prime candidate for change in the same vein as other high-impact, cheap spells like Execute and Innervate in the past. But it evaded a nerf this time around. So...what now?

In a meta less impacted by Raza and Patches, some believe there will be space for decks that can counter Cubelock. But its anti-aggro tools, 25-damage burst potential, and late-game value with Bloodreaver Gul'dan or N'Zoth, the Corruptor leave it with few exploitable weaknesses. Decks that go infinite like Jade Druid (No Ultimate Infestation nerf!) or OTK the opponent like Exodia Mage do come to mind. Cubelock will be the deck to beat, and the new meta that approaches will form around it in response — that much is certain.

Blizzard must have some data, or a looming set of cards, that assure them Warlock can be kept in check. For a couple months, though, you should expect to see a lot of Voidlord, Possessed Lackey, and Spellbreaker.

Trying to Find a Balance

Again, what changes we are getting are good ones. We won't know for sure the implications until after a few days of seeing the meta evolve, but as always, that won't stop us from speculating. Setting the Warlock problem aside, here are my first impressions of what the changes mean.

Patches the Pirate no longer has charge. 

Find decks which contain Patches the Pirate here.

This is a good, simple change that will forever reduce its impact on the Wild format. It's just unfortunate that it took so long.

Patches is the fastest card in Hearthstone, and its loss of charge will slow the meta. The cool thing about this change is that pirate decks are still viable! But the "Pirate Package" of Patches the Pirate, Southsea Captain, and their ragtag band of scallywags perhaps won’t be auto-inclusions in all aggressive decks.

If Patches still sees play (it will), Golakka Crawler just got a lot better, because the nerf keeps Patches from immediately interacting with the board. Its potential value goes down a lot, while Golakka Crawler's goes up.

Drawing Patches is, of course, still devastating — now much more so. Let this sink in: Stonetusk Boaris now better than a Patches drawn from the deck.

Again: what took so long?

Raza the Chained no longer grants a free hero power.

Find decks which contain Raza the Chained here.

Another overdue but essential nerf. In Standard, the Highlander Priest archetype as we know it will be gone when Raza can't provide a free hero power (or five) every turn. It reduces the total damage output potential and makes it so much more difficult to clear threats while drawing cards — a capability it depends on to function at the high level at which we've seen it for so long. 

In Wild, the Highlander archetype will likely remain viable because Reno Jackson provides the time to draw cards and Spawn of Shadows gives an extra handful of damage potential. Its viability, of course, will depend on whether or not this manages to be enough to compete with other top-tier decks — which we can only know after some experimentation.

Corridor Creeper remains cheap or free, but is much less threatening.

Find decks which contain Corridor Creeper here.

The good thing is that Corridor Creeper will no longer be an auto-include in 75% of decks. The bad thing is that it might just be too bad to be included in any but the aggressive decks that capitalize on Beast synergy, like Aggro Druid and Face Hunter.

The cheap threat Corridor Creeper posed wasn’t its foremost problem; the problem was that it was difficult to respond to. Its swing on the board could have been mitigated if it were easier to answer, perhaps by lowering its health significantly. Now, it’s just as difficult to respond to, but lacks the meaningful threat that made it good in the first place.

Perhaps the Hearthstone commentariat will sleep on this not-so-big-guy again, but I don’t think there’s much room for this card in such a range of decks anymore.

Turn 7 is no longer the Bonemare turn.

Find decks which contain Bonemare here.

Turn 8 is instead. Make no mistake: Bonemare is still great! But the extra mana cost means more time for the opponent to disassemble a board that gives Bonemare value, more time the card sits dormant in earlier turns, and less combo potential with especially Tempo Rogue's great 3-drop minions like Tar Creeper. It's a significant hit to the card.

Bonemare hasn't been as oppressive in recent months as it was immediately after the Knights of the Frozen Throne release. This nerf likely has to do with its power in Arena, where it is currently a snap pick across classes and boasts some of the most impressive numbers in tier lists. The mana increase won't make the common neutral any less frequent an option, but it might make it less of an obvious choice in the draft.

Balance in All Things?

These nerfs are indeed a good thing. The meta will be slower and less predictable, at least for a short while. I wish the changes to Raza and Patches came half a year ago. And I do worry about the unchecked power of the Cubelock archetype.

That said, whatever new meta emerges in the wake of these changes, we'll be here to shine a spotlight on new decks and trends.

What do you think of the changes? And what will you be playing on ladder once they go live? Let us know in the comments!