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.
Yet you fail to mention that Jaina ALSO needs a lot of cards to make it work. Against control classes do you think I can just ping a one health minion every turn to make a water ele? Think of a control player's removal resources that are used to make water eles as a Kingsbane player's weapon enchantments needed to make Kingsbane strong. Against control you often aren't using things like FS or Blizzard to remove threatening boards, but are using it to maybe kill a couple minions and allow you to make a water ele from one of them. This is exactly why you won't see a control mage expend removal before in Jaina mode unless they absolutely have to and are at risk of losing otherwise, because it is essentially like a Kingsbane player having to deadly poison a normal dagger to kill something if they don't have Kingsbane yet. This is what I'm talking about with the whole rose colored glasses thing. You build up your own argument for why Kingsbane is such a 'skillful deck' while ignoring crucial aspects about decks like Control Mage, saying that it just needs Jaina to auto win matches, when in reality if you actually played the deck you'd realize that there are plenty of comparisons with your own deck. While Jaina is what creates water eles you CANNOT win with those water eles unless you also expend resources to create them in the first place.
I'm curious though. What playstyle is Jaina invalidating? If you say aggro I will have to shut that argument down right now because Jaina is at the best a turn 8 play (with coin). As aggro you're supposed to be aiming to win long before then anyway. Going back to wild Kingsbane Rogue vs Reno Mage it showed just how awful the power level of KIngsbane Rogue was. I play a control deck that is most favored against the rogue out of almost all other control decks, have a tech card that ripped away Doomerangs & Deadly Poisons on curve, played Jaina on curve to start expending resources to create water eles and force the rogue to spend resources that weren't burned by geist, and kept pressure up by continually creating water eles to try to win and still ended up losing because even without the Doomerangs & with Kingsbane at a slightly lower attack due to no Deadly Poison I still lost because I could never get a water to stick for more than a turn. One of those games I even oozed the rogue's Kingsbane twice and all of those games were still lost. If a favored control match-up still got horribly crushed even with getting as perfect of a draw/on curve plays as you could that is a REALLY bad sign.
Early Christmas present
DK Jaina invalidates a lot of playstyles, many decks, and is only one card. It gives lifegain in a class that naturally does not have it and actually doesn't really need that.
Kingsbane on it's own is really weak, needs a lot of cards that are, on their own, very weak. It used to give lifegain in a class that naturally doesn't have it, but needs it badly to make use of Kingsbane.
right , might as well give her battleCry as
"battle cry : heal equal to the total minions attack you control this turn"
change priest to heal (instead of damage because he normally do do a lot of damage to the face of hero" to heal 2 every time a card is played
Oh for sure, mindless aggro is a nightmare in wild. It has too much supporting it, and Blizzard treats wild as a dumping ground behind the veil of "Oh boy, how kooky is wild!?" Instead, it's a place where broken interactions are ignored until the wild community has to figuratively scream out for balance (good old giants meta wasn't long ago, and Star Aligner was awful).
Genn and Baku will definitely be a pain to face for a long time. There are too many options for aggro to take advantage of them, especially paladin.
There you go, I couldn't have said it better myself.
I'm not sure quoting means what you think it does in that context.
Really fair, expecting a 5-6 card investment (Kingsbane + multiple buffs to its attack + Leeching Poison + another Leeching Poison card because you MUST run a duplicate) to lose to your 1 card 'combo'.
Good thing Jades will still kill your 1 card win-con. I hate Jades, but DKs are just the worst of the worst and should be banned from all formats.
Are you honestly trying to defend the power level of end game Kingsbane? The deck had ZERO weaknesses once it got to the end game. As I said in my post that you quoted even when I used the strongest control counter to the deck, got handed the best draws I possibly could get to counter them, I still lost every single time. You really don't a problem with that?
Talk about rose-tinted glasses. I guess when somebody really loves a deck too much they really cannot accept logical arguments when it invalidates an entire playstyle (technically two playstyles that it auto-won against normal control decks & OTK control decks).
You can still play Shudderwok in wild *hinthint*. Doppelgangster is a worse Saronite Chain Gang, but it provides the exact same effect of duplicating Shudderwok for Grumble.
Actually it is. Some of my first games just tinkering with the deck and having almost no experience it were pretty solid. Probably far from a Tier 1 deck and doubt it will reach such status but it is certainly a decent tempo deck.
ITS time shudderwock to kneel :)
In which world do you live? The nerf have always occurred after more than 2 months.
This is the problem with the Leeching poison nerf for me - it doesn't just make the deck less effective, it kills it stone dead.
Exactly. I don't understand why. There would be so many other options to make the deck less powerful, like increasing costs or nerfing the boomerang, but with this nerf they killed all Kingsbane decks stone dead. I find it's a big loss in the Heathstone universe. By the way, due to my experience I didn't find the Kingsbane decks too overpowered. I had quite a balanced win-and-loose-rate due to the fact, that you don't have powerful minions and have to rely on your weapon while searching for 2 out of 30 cards which gives you life steal. Against aggro decks Kingsbane was bad.
Not to mention, all the dust players invested in creating cards for the Kingsbane decks who won't find an appropriate compensation now.
So why, Blizzard? The only reason I see is a bunch of incapable developers!!!
no Hearthstone is not the type to "Weaken decks" they are to kill the deck and let a new op deck come to surface and then kill it to have another one show up and the circle repeats every 6months, because they lazy fucks like all american companies, as long as money comes, we'll make 10000s or excuses, make kill cards / decks unplayable and make uninteresting cards with shit effect and call it part of w.o.w, and call it a day and goes home to make more retarded babies.
Things start smelling pretty bad in here as well for HS,
Thought it was only WoW, D3 and HoTS.
Overwatch next?
After I've disenchanted the cards from the recent nurf...
And before editing the other decks... Which deck to play, what do you think?
The fact is that every deck (besides the obvious exception) that I had already created for Standard was unusable after I disenchanted the nurfed cards. That's it! It just means that almost all of my decks had at least one of the nurfed cards. It is just a fun fact that I wanted to share, nothing more mysterious than that ;)
And, by the way, Even paladin WAS affected by the change, because it has Val'anyr in the deck...
*Disenchants wild growth*