Six Card Nerfs Coming - Naga Sea Witch, Spiteful Summoner, and More!
We'll see six card nerfs in a Hearthstone update sometime after the HCT Summer Playoffs. They will all be disenchantable for full dust value one the patch arrives. Please do not disenchant these cards until that patch!
- Naga Sea Witch - Cost is now 8, up from 5.
- Spiteful Summoner - Cost is now 7, up from 6.
- Dark Pact - Now restores 4 Health, down from 8.
- Possessed Lackey - Cost is now 6, up from 5.
- Call to Arms - Cost is now 5, up from 4.
- Crystal Core - Effect now makes all minions in your deck 4/4, down from 5/5.
We've got dedicated threads available to discuss each card nerf.
Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf
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Reviews on Today's Nerfs Announcement
Here are some community thoughts on the nerfs in video format.
Announcement Blog Post
Quote from BlizzardIn an update that will arrive some time after the HCT Playoffs are complete, we will be making balance changes to the following cards:
Naga Sea Witch – Will cost 8 mana. (Up from 5)
In update 9.1, we introduced a rule change to increase the consistency of Hearthstone game mechanics. The change affected precisely when Naga Sea Witch’s cost change was applied to cards. This allowed it to be combined with the cost reduction effects on giants, and as a result, it became fairly easy to reduce their mana cost to 0.
We think Hearthstone is better all around when interactions are consistent, and we like the fact that a Naga Sea Witch giants deck archetype exists. That said, we also understand that, with its current functionality, this deck can generate early board states that are unreasonable for most classes to deal with. By increasing the cost of Naga Sea Witch to 8 mana, the deck’s concept remains intact, but the combo is delayed until later in a match when more decks are likely to have the tools to handle the arrival of so many giants.
Spiteful Summoner – Will cost 7 mana. (Up from 6)
After set rotation arrived with the Year of the Raven, Spiteful Summoner became more powerful and consistent when used in decks containing 10 mana cost spells. This is because the pool of 10 mana cost minions in Standard is smaller, so players could more reliably count on getting a powerful minion from Spiteful Summoner’s effect. Even considering the deckbuilding sacrifices that an effective Spiteful Summoner deck requires, we think that increasing the card’s mana cost to 7 is more in line with the powerful outcomes that are possible when it’s used alongside cards like Ultimate Infestation.
Dark Pact – Will restore 4 Health. (Down from 8)
There are two aspects of Dark Pact that make it powerful. At a cost of 1 mana, it’s easily used alongside cards like Carnivorous Cube, Possessed Lackey, and Spiritsinger Umbra for big combo turns. It also gives Warlocks enough healing potential so that aggressively using Lifetap and playing cards like Kobold Librarian and Hellfire feel less consequential. We left Dark Pact’s cost intact so it can still be used as part of interesting combos, but lessened the healing it provides so Warlocks will need to more carefully consider how much damage they take over the course of a match.
Possessed Lackey – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)
Some of the card combos involving Possessed Lackey present situations that are too difficult to deal with in the early-to-mid stages of the game. Increasing its mana cost to 6 delays some of those powerful card combos to turns that are easier for opposing decks to overcome.
Call to Arms – Will cost 5 mana. (Up from 4)
Currently, there are three popular Paladin decks: Even Paladin, Murloc Paladin, and Odd Paladin. Among the three decks, Even Paladin and Murloc Paladin have consistently been the most powerful two archetypes over the first few weeks since the release of The Witchwood. Call to Arms moving to 5 mana restricts it from being used in Even decks and reduces its power somewhat when used in Murloc and other Paladin decks.
We expect that players will experiment with Call to Arms at 5 mana in Odd Paladin decks, but we don’t expect this card to have much of an impact. This is because Odd Paladin can’t access 2 mana minions (meaning Call to Arms could only ever summon three 1 mana minions if played in that deck).
Note: As a result of this change, we are adjusting the “Greymane’s Alliance” deck recipe. It will now have two copies of Saronite Chain Gang in place of Call to Arms.
The Caverns Below – The quest reward, Crystal Core, will read: For the rest of the game, your minions are 4/4. (Down from 5/5)
The Quest Rogue deck uses a strategy that’s strong against slow, control-heavy and fatigue decks, but struggles against most other deck archetypes. There’s a fine line between being powerful against very slow decks and being powerful versus virtually all non-aggressive strategies. By changing the quest reward to make the resulting minions 4/4 instead of 5/5, Quest Rogue should still be a reasonable option versus slow, extreme late-game decks, but offer a less polarized matchup with more moderate control decks.
I'd personally prefer to see some of these cards just work differently (especially the Rogue quest, which behaves in a very non-intuitive fashion), but their philosophy is obviously to leave the mechanic intact whenever possible and weaken through stat changes. Although the solution seem less creative, this makes some sense when you're managing a player base of tens of millions of people. That said, Blizzard seems to think its average user is pretty thick-headed, given how much design space is sacrificed on the alter of "ease of use." Maybe I'd share that opinion if I had to read their customer support logs, who knows.
Call to Arms will still be OP for Secret Pally, which has serious potential as a poor man's Murloc's, which will be a de-facto Tier 1 deck.
Woohoo. Hooray for 6k+ dust. All the pain to not mass disenchant paid off.
does that still work? I had 3 copies of Ice Block but got full refund for only 2 when they rotated.
Yes, nerfed and rotated cards works different.
Anduin approves this changes.
Everything that we expected. changes are good though, blizzard is finaly making good nerf decisions and not completely destroying cards.
The ONLY thing im happy about here is the naga sea witch (which shows they care about wild). The rest of the nerfs seem that they won't be enough to really shake up the meta
New Crystal Core state - "If you are Priest, your @!$#d, just concede"
To be fair we were already f*cked most of the time
Because priest was just super fine with infinite 5/5 waves till now :)
Edit: Can I at least know why I'm getting downvoted so much? I get there are people who disagree with me but I'd much rather see them explaining why they think I'm wrong instead of just spamming the downvote button....
I think you are underestimating the nerfs, they look weak on the surface, but on the big picture they make a big difference on the overall winrate of the most dominant decks.
Lots of Kobolds Nerfs! I may go and get some packs, I’ll get some dust and luckily a lot or dust, I am also lacking some legendaries from the set.
Happy all around!
I like that most of these are soft nerfs so the cards will still be viable. I know most of the community would have nerfed Quest Rogue to oblivion if they had a chance. Besides Naga all of the cards look playable.
Especially Spiteful which still looks really good at 7. I'm betting that next expansion we will be seeing at least three 10 drops with shitty stats as an indirect nerf.
I'm happy, that Blizzard decided to nerf Call to Arms and will not touch Sunkeeper Tarim. IMHO Tarim isn't a problem card.
To people saying "Odd Pally"
Imo call to arms is pretty bad in odd pally since u have only 1cost minions that are recruitable with it =)