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.
Level Up! finally Level Up!
nourish was played before UI lookup yogg token druid in wotog and karazhan
You are certainly right. One could also add jade druid to the list. But these were standard decks and now all of those cards are not present in the current enviroment and I don't know if the power level of wild would allow any of those archetypes to make use of nourish post nerf. Fact of the matter is Druid better get some flavourful ramp options going onwards , otherwise it would be a major blow to their most unique mechanic and thus to their identity as a class
no nerf to hunter means hunter is just a bad move, when you nerf top archtypes, nerf all of them...
we saw this countless times
Hunter has weakness... It still cannot deal with swarmy decks... So it should be ok as they nerf only 1 swarmy deck...
Warlock still completely destroys hunters.
Druid taunt will still own it.
I'm not even mad, thats amazing
Really happy with these nerfs and the fact they are coming now instead of in 2 months. I'm especially happy with leeching poison as I'm mainly a wild player and Kingsbane has been dominating there since it was released, and is really un-fun to play against with the type of decks I enjoy.
I have to admit I'm a little sad about Saronite though. I think it's probably for the best, but there was something nice about the card, to me it felt the perfect balance of being just good enough to play vanilla, but with the potential for interesting synergies with handbuffs. Shudderwock isn't played in wild and if it was it can still work with doppelgangster, so this change is only to help standard for the next 3.5 months, which is probably worth it for the sanity of those players.
First reactions:
-Now we can finally start to complain about something different!!!
-No Hex nerf?
-Are they drunk or have they finally understood how to manage the game?
-I'm so f****** happy!!!
time in EU?
Probably later today around 7 pm GMT as it's usually the hour for the patches.
nice hunterstone incomming...
They need to nerf hunters cards too, rexar is a pain on .... every time get or poison or lifesteal and that is annoying, katrina is another card that should be take to view, the recruit system should be gone of the game....
prepare urself people, hunters is going to be the meta... tier 1 tier 2 and tier 3 and tier 4 and .......................... Tier N
nice nerfs, hate shudderwock
RIP druid 2014-2018
Seriously rotation would be more than enough to kil druid in standard
Nourish and Wild Growth would've limited design space for Druid forever. Also I'm excited to see new ramp tools for Druid in the future that's not blatantly overpowered.
GODO COME UN CAZZO DI CANE IN CALORE
I absolutely I agree with you, they were like: ‘Yo guys, we haven’t talked in a while, anyway here are the nerfs, they will be released today’. Wtf...
Don’t worry about hunter, after rotation, no more Spellstones, Rhok’delar and most importantly DK Rexxar. All the value cards will be gone, they will be weak af.
New Team 5 drops the bomb. These changes are fair, and make a lot of sense. I don't like that my odd pally is now dead, but whatever, there are other fish in the sea. Nicely done, keep up the good work.
Hunterstone incoming in 3...2...1... im putting secrets detroyers in every deck right know