Upcoming Hearthstone Balance Changes - Wild Growth, Nourish, Level Up!, Saronite Chain Gang, Leeching Poison CHANGES ARE NOW LIVE
Five card changes are coming to Hearthstone on December 19th, which is... today!
- [Discuss this Change] Wild Growth now costs 3, up from 2.
- [Discuss this Change] Nourish now costs 6, up from 5.
- [Discuss this Change] Level Up! now costs 6, up from 5.
- [Discuss this Change] Saronite Chain Gang now summons another Saronite Chain Gang, instead of a copy of the minion.
- [Discuss this Change] Leeching Poison now costs 1, down from 2, and only gives Lifesteal for 1 turn.
Check out Blizzard's post below for more information on each of the changes.
Quote from BlizzardIn an update scheduled to arrive December 19 PST, the following cards will be changed.
Developer’s Note: This balance update is focused on improving the long-term health of both Standard and Wild. We've opted to make these changes earlier in the expansion cycle than we normally consider; we'd like to hear your feedback on the timing of this update, in addition to what you think of all the individual card changes.
Wild Growth – Will cost 3 mana. (Up from 2)
Nourish – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)
Wild Growth and Nourish have been present in every mid-range, combo, and control Druid deck since their introduction in the Basic and Classic set. When cards from the Basic and Classic set are too powerful, they can have negative long-term effects on the game. Continuously playing against these cards can start to feel repetitive, and they can feel so mandatory that they stifle creative deckbuilding decisions. By increasing the mana cost of both cards by one, we expect them to be considerations in late-game control Druid decks, but more difficult to fit in strategies that don’t directly take advantage of ramping mana.
Level Up! – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)
Odd Paladin has consistently been one of the most powerful and most played decks since its introduction in The Witchwood. By removing Level Up from Odd Paladin, we still expect it to be a competitive board control deck, just with more consistent damage output that should be easier to play around.
Saronite Chain Gang – Now reads: Taunt. Battlecry: Summon another Saronite Chain Gang.
Shudderwock brings an interesting combo to the table, but playing Shudderwock multiple times in a single game can be frustrating. Changing Saronite Chain Gang makes playing multiple Shudderwocks in a game much more difficult. Shudderwock should now exist as a powerful one-turn effect rather than constantly copying itself with Saronite Chain Gang’s Battlecry.
Leeching Poison – Will cost 1 mana. (Down from 2). Now reads: Give your weapon Lifesteal this turn.
We love the fantasy of building a powerful weapon over the course of a game with Kingsbane, but granting it a permanent Lifesteal effect with Leeching Poison resulted in an endgame with few weaknesses, as well as conflicting with our philosophy that Rogues should not have persistent self-healing effects. Making the Lifesteal effect only active for one turn should address some of the power level issues with Kingsbane Rogue’s late game.
Kiwii's Thoughts
Resident deck architect Kiwiinbacon had some thoughts on the nerfs.
Bye bye Shudderwock! you'll be always in my heart!
All but one of theses nerfs (Saronite Chain Gang) are perfect examples of how Blizzard targets cards that havent been a problem before, instead of their higher rarity powercreep enablers (Ui, Kingsbane, Baku Hero Power). On the other hand, Shudderwock can now actually be a nice card in decks like evolve shaman without beeing this stupid combo engine.
Two things leave me feeling somewhat salty about this. First, the announcement being done without any previous warning. We usually learn about nerfs two weeks in advance so players who crafted cards for any single archetype that would be downgraded or even gutted by those nerfs can have a minimun amount of time to play them even if they crafted them the day before the annoucement.
Secondly, I think only level up might see competitive play after these changes, though it would involve some reworking of an already well optimized list (even paladin) so I'm not even sure. Once again the problem is that more often than not Blizzard knows what to nerf but fails to nerf it correctly (ie without rendering the targeted cards completely useless).
On regards to the "hunter" Issue , I believe that if after the loss of spellstone and rhok delar they remain on equal power level post rotation , they will also be toned down , "alla cubelock".
PS: Everything that happened to druid since 2016 onwards shows that most comments Kibler has made regarding the mistakes in the way Blizzard handled the (much needed) introduction of formats were right on point. I also believe that there is a chance for wild growth and nourish (specially nourish) get the "molten giant" treatment a couple of rotations from now, after the loss of UI and other minor powerful cards from the year of the mammoth drop their playrate to almost non existent
I know it's wild, but i just want blizzard to nerf Thing from Below along with some big priest stuff and i will be happier than i already am right now.
The nerfs are also for wild guys, which is why they aren’t just beefing UI or something. The ability for druid to get big mana fast will always be powerful, and this seriously hurts the wild meta game.
Same. +3400 dust here :)
While there's a lot of decks we all love to hate getting rekt here, I think this round of nerfs is going to harm more than help in the long run
by "timing" I think they meant how long after the last expansion, normally they do nerfs 2 months after an expansion is released, i guess to see what the meta evolves into. Personally I'm glad they are doing it now though!
They nerf nourish and wild growth but those cards were not a problem before. Nourish is used to ramp ONLY only because of UI. Before it was often used as a card draw and druid was much much slower. Again: the UI is the problem not WG and Nourish that much...
I think that the main reason they focused on with the nourish and wild growth nerf is to open up the possibility to print powerfull late game cards for druid like UI in the future.
Wild Big Priest again? Noooooooo
I like all of these changes except for Level Up!. I think a better way to nerf odd paladin and still keep it a good deck is if they changed the upgraded hero power from ''Summon 2 1/1 Silver Hand Recruits'' to ''Summon 1 2/2 Silver Hand Recruit''.
I thought the exact same thing.
Edit: I will still play the crap out of this deck till the nerf
So you are skipping work this morning then?
They listened?
THEY LISTENED
Hey Kingsbane ( ° ͜ʖ͡°)╭∩╮
Was the only reason I play rogue, I hate playing miracle.
You must be new to hearthpwn babyrage forums, welcome
Welcome to hearthstone, you must be new