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.
As for dark pact, this is the only way they could nerf it that has any relevance other than completely butchering the card by making its manacost way too high. What is said in the post about the reason for the nerf is the complete and absolute truth about the card: It provided WAY too much fucking health for a class that can easily turn health directly into cards every single turn for the entire game.
Remember that Life Tap is, by a fucking humongous, colossal, not-even-funny margin the best hero power in the game, blowing out every single other hero power by several magnitudes, and it is ONLY balanced because A: warlock cards, on average pound-for-pound are worse than other class cards, and B: being too aggressive with it can get you killed. Currently warlock has so many stupidly powerful cards at its disposal that A is completely negated, and dark pact pretty much single handedly negated B, but even especially more so due to other cards also existing at the same time, like spellstone.
Eh, that's nice, but all we wanted was to give Doomguard rush instead of charge.
Doomguard is fine, its only problem is when you cheat it out and you already saw Possessed Lackey nerf.
No one wanted that. That's a terrible change.
no
Woohoo! I have an odd Priest deck where I really want to add Spiteful. Finally! :D
Shhhhh, let him have his dream
I don't see why not. Psychic Scream and some 5 cost spells, Arcane Tyrant, and there's a bunch of good 3 drops for priest.
It's not the same OTK turn 6 crap they're trying to nerf right now, but it's something...
I don't understand nerf of Naga Witch. Why just they didn't do it, to be as it should be. All cards to cost 5.
Otherwise nerfs may work. I hope that this will make meta more fresh.
ikr. everything being overridden to 5 mana is actually a lot more intuitive. now it has no use outside of giants and just delays the giants FACEPALM
Well so im just seeing all these nerfs for the first time and here's what i think
It looks to me has if blizzard wanted to try to make control pally more viable, being that the 3 best pally decks are all aggro or some can say midrange. With the nerf to Call to Arms I think even control might be viable. Equality,consec, pyromancer, tyrion... Its a good possibility.
Has for all the other "nerfs" 2nd best would be Naga sea witch bc 3 more mana or "turns" without the coin is a big deal.
All the others are not really nerfs just a bit slower. Spiteful is still up to a 16/16 for 7 mana whixh is absolutely insane with a 10 cost spell. Possessed lackey... 1 mana more is fine warlock have so many controllng spells they can last 1 more turn no problem.
Should be interesting to see how it pans out.. but, ill definitely be trying control even pally soon. Remember I said it here first!!
4 of the 6 nerfs from Kobold's. Time to open some Kobold's packs for some good ol' dust roulette!
good job on even paladin nerf, but warlock barely going to feel this. gg another 2 years of bullshit
Thanks Blizzard for not touching Sunkeeper Tarim. I need that card in my control paladin in wild heheh
again only half done job nerf. odd pala isn't nerfed and is currently 4th best preforming deck on ladder. in a large gap from the decks that are coming after it. winrates from hsreplay:
denying the truth won't make it go away. start realize that we are bound to see a few more months of pala dominance cause blizzard, again, served us half baked nerfs. i also assume control mage will raise as most of it's hard matchups are now gone. maybe it will keep odd pala under some sort of control but i find it hard to believe.
Yes I agree with you. Aggro mage will also increase a lot maybe.
You can't predict the meta in this way because you don't know exactly what decks were being supressed by the three nerfed decks. Perhaps Odd Paladin was particularly successful because of how it did against the three decks above it, or maybe it had a high win-rate because some of the counters to it were non-existent due to getting countered themselves by another high-performing deck.
You could be right, but your certainty is VERY premature, and your analysis supporting it is quite poorly thought out.
There is basicly no card to nerf in Odd paladin, maybe it's the why? Just check the list... Meta is going to change and we will see.