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
Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf Discuss the Nerf
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.
You are not supposing correctly then Suskis.
first round is not that hard
but there's normally second round and you used 2 card to do that
Ha-ha, B.Brode gone and they immediately started to do proper nerfs and even right on time. So who was the root of evil in Blizzard?;)
Nothing too surprising in the nerf list. The severity of nerfs is kinda what I expected too. The Naga Sea Witch balance change put the biggest smile on my face--can't come soon enough! But, the Quest Rogue change seems somewhat interesting. Sonya was just a beast in that deck and added so much consistency to quest completion. That aside, gj Blizz!
Spiteful nerf to little .
Odd paladin hero power also need to nerf.
I see that many are unsure about how the changes are going to affect the meta, I decided to take a moment and ponder about how they might affect the meta! While we can all agree that nerfs were needed, lets hope that they also do what they were intended!
I made a video explaining my opinion on the matter, I hope you all enjoy!!
The return of paladin decks that are not even or odd? Control Pala, Midrange Pala, Buffadin hopefully to be on par with even/odd now. No longer aggro pala only anymore seem good for me
The funny thing is, this nerf hits Even paladin, which is a midrange deck.
Control Paladin might work better now that it doesn't have to deal with Cubelocks.
And...odd pala is still a problem
it is a strong deck, but i would hardly consider it a problem. do you expect blizzard to nerf all the strong decks just because ppl lose once in a while to them. by your rationale they should have nerfed hadranox druid, tempo mage and shudderwock shaman just because they will win against most other non-meta decks
Hearthstone cards can be EASILY overpowered or useless with a slight change as proven in the past and those cards will be no exception.
I truly wish they had adopted the attack/defense phase like mtg and increase deck size. Just with this they can allow themselves to have many "overpowered" card that can still be countered/killed and Secret could have been REAL secrets... It would also not be such a joke of an Esport.
Any changes not simply affect those cards being nerfed, it's the ENTIRE decks. Hope Blizzard seriously rethink/improve the refund mechanic.
I totally agree with you, I said this earlier and the spoiled kids just downvoted me. When they nerf a card and basically kills the deck you're not getting the dust refund back, you're just getting back the dust of only 1 CARD of other several cards you crafted and now some of them are useless or will be useless until a new deck appears. Just like me, I'm a f2p player and play cubelock, if somehow with these nerfs cubelocks dies, what happens with the dust I spent on skull of manari? lord godfrey? The cubes? Doomguards? guldan death knight? You can say these cards are good but they are just good alone, doesn't matter if they are good or not if there is no good deck for them, and now I have to play hundreds of games again to get the dust I may loose just because hearthstone team don't give a shit about f2p players.
That's an incredibly naive way of looking at this problem. The deck was overpowered for the last 4 months and warped an entire format around it. If your deck couldn't beat cubelock, your deck was unplayable, that's how bad it was. This change in no way invalidates the deck, and especially not the other cards you listed which are still mostly core in control warlock such as guldan and godfrey. It's extremely selfish and toxic to complain about a nerf that needed to happen to save the state of this game. You are losing almost nothing when this nerf hits other than power, your cards will still be usefull, and warlock will still be very playable.
You're playing Blizzard's game, not paying them a dime, and getting to enjoy it. Stop being an entitled child crying "But muh F2P". Dust refunds are for a singular card, if that nerf kills the deck, it kills the deck. You shouldn't be given tonnes of dust in compensation.
Still failed to see if these changes would solve anything...
of course it's a tad weaker than current... but... were they enough?
Even, were they the real root of the problems?
(Edit: I mean, was the summoner's problem really about the mana cost? shdn't it be like "summon the minion the same cost and discard the spell that revealed". Dark pack's problem was the heal amount???)
Spiteful - probably nothing changes, maybe some custom even decks.
Dark Pact - saves vs aggro, but now main aggro is dead.
Possessed lackey - hooray, now you can stop thinking what to place on turn 5 - skull or lackey.
i think hiting locks with two card nerfs is awesome. they could have done alot less, do you remember how strong jade druid was in its prime with the introduction of UI? and yet they only nerfed spreading plague lmao