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.
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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 don't understand Naga sea Witch at all. They should have just reverted the effect to what it was before they added the patched where all minions cost 5 then card text takes place. They've destroyed the card and I don't see why it saw some but not much play at 5 mana when the effect was just your cards cost 5. Seems totally unnecesary and unreasonable.
What was its previous effect? They all cost 5? but isn't that what it does now?
Before the update, all giantes costed 5 independently of the mana discount you get from them, if you were at 1 hp molten giant would cost 5, and after its update if you were at 25 hp it would cost 0 because the initial cost of it would change to 5 and with the discounts you would get it to 0 easily.
These nerfs were sorely needed. I hope they do what they're supposed to do.
rip even paladin, Call to Arms n Spiteful Summoner now have cost odd
Naga Sea Wtch... Hm... Turn 8 = summon 6 gians... Still good
nah you're dead to aggro. you're dead to lightbomb / twisting nether, psychic scream and vanish without prep gets you if you coined naga previously. it's a nerf into the ground and good riddance.
Im laughing about rogue quest, they fucked up with it second time already.
priest is best deck now
quesr rorgue is counter, but not many ladder
Quest rogue is now a priest counter
But it's truly dead now, doesnt matter will it be a counter for priest or not. 4/4 is an easy target for flamestrike/2 blizzards/Auchenai+CoH/Psychic Scream/etc. I just dont get the way they produce these nerfs. It's like "We dont know how to balance it, so lets just fuck everything by rising the cost/lowering value".
Wrong Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing
I can't help but notice that big priest in wild didn't get any nerfs from this...
They rarely nerf wild, this is like second nerf to wild since creation of wild... third if you consider couple of cards which were nerfed right before rotation. But big priest is not all that powerful compared to average wild deck... I mean I literally can kill big priest turn 4 with Murloc Shaman before they even get to play Shadow Word: Horror (not to mention that with +2/+2 buff my murlocs don't even die to Shadow Word: Horror and they don't have enough mana to add Pint-Size Potion)
Note that the majority of cards that were changed are from K&C.
Hmmm...
Well that is how it is they print OP cards towards the end of rotation year with excuse that they will be with us only for 1 year and 4 months, and they were really hoping that rotation would spice things up, but then Warlock lost only like 1 non important card and Paladins still have insane turn 4 even if minions that they pull from Call to Arms are slightly different now... And Spiteful Summoner did get a lot more spicy that is for sure...
I don't get it...
How Call to Arms still so cheap ? To me, drawing a card should cost 2, as it always has been for most of the classes. What does Call to Arms is drawing 3 cards (which already cost 5 for a druid, btw) and plays it for free, with possibility of instant effect on-board (Dire wolf, Knife juggler, or any Charge or Rush minions in this range, etc.). That card would have cost 7, it would still be good (considering the deck is well-fashioned)...
You misunderstand the point here.
Classic Aggro paladin from K&C is not good anymore. However, Call to Arms costing 4 is what drove Even Pally through the roof, because it could cheat out 6 mana worth of cards for 4 (similar to how Spiteful Summoner gave you about 13 mana worth of stats for 6 mana). However, changing Call to Arms's cost to 5 makes it so that it can't be run in Even Pally anymore, only Odd pally, where it is much worse, as it can only pull 1 drops; and 5 mana for 3 mana worth of minions is really bad. It might be seen as a one-off in the deck, just to counterplay board clears.
Now, if we took your balance, and make Call to Arms cost 7, I'm pretty sure it would never be played, EVER. The only reason it's played so much is that it's a cheap mechanism to get out a lot of minions. Having it cost 7 would just kill the card. You see, Blizzard is not full of idiots; they design cards around specific archetypes. Call to Arms was designed with Aggro Paladin in mind. If it costs 7, might as well just play three 2 drops from your hand. Call to Arms is NOT a draw mechanic, I have no idea where you got that impression from. It's a way to cheat out early game pressure and comeback after board clears. In fact, I think this change just killed the card. Probably the only deck this card would be viable in is Murloc Pally, and only because it's a deck that doesn't have even/odd requirements. It can no longer cheat out early game for Even Pally, and it is absolute trash in Odd pally. I think that this card was perfectly balanced at 4 mana, just that the sheer number of Aggro Paladins have caused people to complain about this card.
I see that now, sorry I made you write these, I understood it by going reading deeper through the comments...
It appeared to me that for every 2-cost minions in your deck, with Call to Arms, you do not need to keep these minions in hand, therefore, you could concentrate on mechanics that could improve these minions once drawn by Call to Arms. In other words, for every minion that could have been in your hand without this card, you can exchange it for a spell of the same cost, control mechanics such as board clears, or simply a bigger minion. That is what I meant when I roughly said that Call to Arms draws cards for free.
However, I remains sceptic on its "un-playability". I mean, even though you could not play it on a Even-cost decks (for obvious reason) or Odd-cost decks (because Level Up!), it remains fairly playable on a classic aggro pally, isn't it ?
YEA FUCK YOU CUBELOCK. Looks like spiteful druid, cubelock, spiteful priest, even paladin and quest rogue just got infinitely worse.