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.
Naga Sea Witch nerf is a bad one. It has to be nerfed because of the broken interaction with cost reduction, so why also target the intended and non-abusive interactions? Now you can't do Sea Witch + another card on turn 10, or accelerate out something big early by protecting an early Sea Witch for one turn. It could have been as simple as "Your cards that cost 10 or less cost 5 instead.", that would limits its use with giants to just Frost Giant and Sea Giant.
Crystal Core is also a pretty bad nerf. It makes the deck weaker, but the problem was not that the deck is too strong, it's that it's too polarizing. The fix should have been to both reduce the reward (which they now did) to make it worse against control. but also to speed up its reward to make it better against aggressive decks.
The other nerfs are great.
Cool changes.
Naga sea witch is the biggest nerf since Warsong Commander, basically deleted the card.
The card is toxic AF and most people won't miss it though.. specially since the power of the card was in a bug fix.
No tarim nerf, warlock nerfs hurts more control lock than cubelock and quest rogue nerf didn't change how polarizing those matchups are.
Meh, didn't like it all that much.
I approve of these changes.
Well, may be the quest is too strong against control, but I didn't only craft the quest 3 weeks ago, but also Sonya and Zola, and I won't get the dust for those too. So now I'm just fucked by blizzard.
Everyone knew that the card could be nerfed anytime, Blizz itselft warned about it.
The Dark pact nerf saddens me - it was perfect as it was - also they chose to nerf Lackey even though the problematic card in cubelock is Doomguard. I don't care about Lackey, but the nerf to a great and needed control tool is just ludacris!
Though the most reasonable change that many had wanted was to make the charge a part of the discard battlecry. No impact for zoo (not counting Gul'Dan, since at this point you shouldn't really need the face damage), while allowing cards to cheat out demons. Doomguard limits those currently....
While ''free' dust is quite cool, I'm more excited for the resultant meta-shakeup that will accompany these nerfs. While everything is up in the air and various pro players try to decide if these nerfs really killed off some decks, I'll be happy to see some unique home-brews while on ladder.
That is, in the ideal world - seems like the meta shapes itself quicker and quicker these days.
And at the end of the day, half of the predictions are wrong :P
Guess it's time to craft Caverns Below
Good nerfs, but I still can't help but feel that Paladin and Cubelock still we be the top decks after these - The Call to Arms nerf probably fucks over Even Paladin, but playing either Murloc or just ''good cards'' Paladin still seems really good.
The Cubelock nerfs actually just nerf how early they get to do their stuff and their risk of dying to burn, it probably still beats most other Control decks and will do well against any non-burn aggro deck.
Spiteful decks are less dumb now, but they still don't seem dead.