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.
Odd-Pala is no budget deck for new player. Hunter without the DK or Zoolock without Prince 2 are Budget Decks. Odd-Pala with Baku, 2x Corridor Creeper and 2x Level up is no budget deck at all for new players!
i guess that as the hyper-aggro fan you are you'll be playing odd rogue anyways,
/r/fuckdruid
Seriously though, great stuff. Although nerfing both Wild Growth and Nourish seems a little excessive, but we'll see.
As much as I hated Kingsbane Rogue. The fact that Big Priest's biggest counter is now probably gone troubles me.
I really like the nerfs, but i would like to see a Rexxar DK nerf to 7 mana and hunter spellstone to 6 Mana. So hunter can tone down as well.
Rexar may come really handy on 6th vs some agro decks, but I think that the most broken in it is infinite value of minions vs control decks. Will it come on 7th or on 6th turn I don't really think that this will change something.
Well i guess that 3k dust each i spent on kingsbane and shudderwock decks won't be coming back
nearly all card's from both decks can be used in other archetypes.
Kingsbane (duh), Doomerang, Greenskin really see no competitive play in other decks than Kingsbane Rogue. Shudderwock, for obvious reasons, doesn't see play in other archetypes than Shudderwock Shaman. You could say it's just 1 legendary, but that's still 1600 dust lost basically.
Shudderwock can still be used in a lot of decks in this meta/future metas, as we can see in some tempo/mid range oriented decks. The only card i can see that does get a huge hit is kingsbane (this is if we don't see a aggro archetype for it) and doomerangs, since greenskin can be used in other agressive types of rogues.
Interesting they are making nerfs this early after new exapc (even if the cards nerfed are not RR).
Irrespective of whether they include the correct cards or not will be interesting to see the effect on the meta. Wonder if more changes will be made before rotation.
No, certainly not. This is the expansion with the least amount of played cards and the least impact. They hoped the meta would change after the expansion but nothing changed so they had to quickly nerf some offenders.
True. Something had to be done. It is insane that most of the current top decks have close to zero cards from RR.
Looks like Hunter and Even Paladin will rule the meta now.
evenlock too
but hunterstone confirmed
Bye Kingsbane
Hello fun games
at last
You forgot about Big Priest, didn’t you?
You do realise it is usually only 3 wolves, often not any wolves because you don't always draw it, it's rng
I love Blizzards quick reaction with these nerfs. Only 2 weeks have passed but the meta is pretty much the same as boomsday so would be boring to play for like 2 months before they normally nerf stuff.
Great nerf on Saronite Chain Gang - Getting spammed by Shudderwocks wasn't fun at all without Dirty Rat in the meta , also nerfs Prince Keleseth a bit since his synergy with this card was pretty strong.
Nice nerf to Level Up! - Odd Paladin is an old and annoying deck . Without this card I don't think it has the power needed to close out games against control decks in time. I am kinda wondering if this will give rise to Even Dude Paladin? With Sunkeeper Tarim , Level Up! , Lightfused Stegodon , Drygulch Jailor...there is a lot of tools for it now, and I think it would be a lot more fun to play against than Odd Paladin.
Loving the nerf to Leeching Poison - Kingsbane decks were always so polarizing. If you play ,,the wrong deck,, you just get destroyed by it and it's not even close. There were no tech options except for warlocks Gnomeferatu + Gluttonous Ooze , but you play midrange/control any other class you are screwed. In wild it was even more annoying thanks to Coldlight Oracle both milling you, preventing you from playing your deck + fetching Kingsbane and it's buffs through insane card draw. I was really hoping for a silence and destroy a weapon ooze this expack even before we knew the Kingsbane Rouge would be tier 1 but I am happy with this nerf instead :) . If the deck survives it's a bit more vulnerable to Skulking Geist now ( destroys Deadly Poison , Doomerang aand Leeching Posion now ) and that's great too.
Now for the druid cards..While I agree that the nerfs were warranted for the meta of today , I don't like the fact that druid doesn't have a good ramp card in classic anymore. It's their main identity along with choose one cards and 1 by 1 Blizzard nerfed every single classic mana ramp card and not only nerfed but pretty much destroyed. Innervate could have easily been ,,refill 2 mana crystals,, but with the current version it's barely playable , Wild Growth is worse than Jade Blossom now for ramping and there were very few decks that ran Jade Blossom just for the ramp aspect. 8 mana is the breakpoint for big minions where you can still play something in that same turn and now you can't draw into and play it on 10 mana with Wild Growth...--> barely playable too. For Nourish a better nerf would be too make it ramp 2 EMPTY mana crystals instead of full ones. The nerf is 2 fold since not only do you have to cough up more mana to play it...the 2 mana ramp is less good since you enjoy the 2 extra mana for 2 turns intead of 3 ( 9,10 instead of 8,9,10 ). Drawing 3 for 6 mana is pretty bad too so I think this Nourish is actually unplayable. The main problem with ramp cards in general is Ultimate Infestation and that would rotate in a few months . Before it came I don't remember that many druids ramping with Nourish...it was seen as a greedy play and if you don't get a lot of card draw afterwards you were screwed. Oh well...I can only hope Blizzard regularly prints solid ramp cards for Druid from now on...since classic doesn't have any good ones anymore.
I do wonder why hunter wasn't touched since it has multiple tier 1/2 decks and none of those are new. Maybe a nerf to Play Dead / Terrorscale Stalker / Kathrena Winterwisp / Lesser Emerald Spellstone would have been good for the meta.
Overall I am pretty happy with the nerfs though. Let's prepare for Hunterstone :)
Kind of terrified for all my druid cards to be unplayable after these nerfs...
yea, got legend with even paladin this season on 77% winrate. it is cool and underwhelmed deck at moment :)