Rough Outline of Coming Balance Changes - Including Sac Pact, Albatross & Kael'thas
Blizzard did a reddit AMA and one of the questions asked was about the upcoming Balance Patch that was posted about in our news last week. We have their answer below, which includes mention of changes to Sacrificial Pact ,Bad Luck Albatross ,Frenzied Felwing ,Kael'thas Sunstrider and the Demon Hunter class with 1 or 2 more cards and more! Read all about it below:
Quote from BlizzardHey! We are planning something soon, but here I will shed light on what we are looking at.
With the Year of the Phoenix and Demon Hunter especially, we want to make sure we are active with our approach to balance. There will be additional changes coming shortly that is focused on Demon Hunter, Standard, Wild, and Arena.
For Demon Hunter, we are still monitoring the data as it comes in but expect 1 or 2 cards to see a change. We are thrilled by how players have responded to Demon Hunter, but we want the class to be in a healthy state for years to come. Will be adjusting as we see fit in order to get it into a great spot.
For other standard cards, we are looking at a number of cards including Sacrificial Pact, Bad Luck Albatross, Frenzied Felwing, and Kael'thas Sunstrider. Some of these cards present some raw power that is just a little too high (Bad Luck Albatross, Frenzied Felwing), while a card like Kael'Thas can create some crazy swing turns but that's usually only fun for one player. Kael'Thas is a super interesting card though so we don't want to kill off his combo potential entirely.
When it comes to Sac Pac, we don't believe it is fun if it plays such a large role in the metagame. That says a lot about where the meta is and your ability to play certain cards. Also, it would be awesome to see more Lord Jaraxxus!
For Wild, we know there has been a lot of very strong reactions to Quest Mage and Darkest Hour Warlock. These decks play in a one-player fashion similar to other decks we've nerfed in the past. There's going to be crazy combos in Wild, but we don't think these two decks in particular are healthy. Expect to see changes to Open the Waygate and Bloodbloom.
Finally for Arena, we are looking to do a full microadjust patch alongside these changes or shortly after. DH is still a little too strong here and we want to bring up the other classes to close this gap.
Only Spells should do that. They like reduce the number of Tokens to 1
Just to clarify, a couple fringe and usually unplayed secrets is not why Jaraxxus isn't played. Of course, a 6/6 per turn is amazing. However, to get that you need to:
* Set your maximum health to 15, which is suicidal against many decks (and given that control warlock decks run a lot of healing due to their self-damage, it'd turn off many of those cards too)
* Take up practically your whole turn with no board to show for it
* Give you a 3/8 weapon that, for the most part, can only go face due to how low your maximum health is.
Effectively, you're giving your opponent a free Alexstrasza effect, in a competitive environment these days where 10+ damage from hand isn't that unusual.
If Jaraxxus even had somewhere between 20-25 health, he might have a chance, and at 30 health it'd be a real possibility (though, again, doing basically nothing on being played is a huge drawback), but 15 health and doing nothing for 9 mana is a big handicap.
So now what? Only playable decks are highlander galakrond garbages?
This should be "battlecry: gain "deathrattle: shuffle 2 1/1s into your opponents deck." "
Maybe with highlander restriction, idk if it would be needed
No abuse by rogues/shadowstep/brann with battlecry and not by resurrect mechanics as on resurrect its only a statstick
Rogues would still be able to shadowstep it. And brann would just give the deathrattle twice. So it's basicly the same thing.
A lot of problems will gone when they realize that heroes need 40hp ...
Not for real, it would be end for all aggro decks and a typical game would last for 40 minutes
They have been balancing things for years with heroes having 30 health in mind. They would need to rebalance everything if they raised it to 40. Also I really don't think it would solve problems. Aggro would struggle a lot harder, so in order to keep aggro alive so not every game is 40 minutes, they would need to print way more powerful aggro cards, but then we are back where we were. Also it just gives more time for dumb combo decks te get their combo and kill you in an unfun way.
Nerf Sac Pact so it could only target friendly demons. So Zephyrs won't be able to kill Jaraxxus with Sac Pact anymore. Simple
No they're still the top performing class. They have Ruin and Renew now.
They're marginally weaker. But it really makes no difference. The early game heals are far better than Seance for dealing with Demon Hunters.
A quick look on HSReplay shows that they have a average winrate of under 50%. Top performing class, sure...
They're in the top 4 classes by winrate and considering only 2 classes have a total above 50% wr that's not bad at all.
The wr is also skewed as the have one super viable deck (Res, top 3 deck rn) and a bunch of hot garbage decks (dragon priest lol). It's why DH has such a high class wr despite only have 1 super viable deck, tempo has a 20% play rate across all classes which skews the stats.
I think for Sacrificial Pact, they should change it to target only friendly demons, however they should raise health heal to 8. So that instead of tech for demons, card become necessary heal for warlock
If u want make jaraxuss playable :
You need to DO something with this :
-Give him 20 HP (15 is not enough) or more
- Change cost of card from 9 to 8 (and Give him a little buff's, that we can use Hero power too) or 10 (and buff him better)
- He can't be a demon now. Why? - Zefrys.. Who want lose game after play him? Nobody. Now a lot of decks has zefrys, this is easy way to destroy jaraxuss by card "sacrifical pact". 2 mana Hero power : summon infernal 6/6, is this good? Hell yeah, so why people doesnt play jaraxuss? The answer is really simple, jaraxuss is a demon, but he should be a Hero card.
You need to THINK about this:
- After bufs he can be playable and maybe too over power, so we should be think about Hero power to. Maybe 2 mana and 4/4 infernal with more than 1 option? 4/4 mana with taunt, Rush or smth like that. Maybe better battlecry? Or maybe make him a Hero card with a lotnof Hero power's like dr boom?
I really really love jaraxuss, but 95% games with him ended at lost. Why? 15 hp is not enough and enemy can easly kill you, sacrifical pact, you can't use Hero power (9 mana cost).
This would be a decent nerf IMO, it prevents it from being resurrected by priest, and lowers its statline to something more in line with the power level of the effect - but still makes it a pretty solid card to play.
Edit: It could cause some problems with Shadowstep and the likes tho, so I'm not entirely sure whether making it a Battlecry is an actual improvement.
I think it's pretty obvious what they need to do. Weasel Tunneler
I see I got hard-downvoted here, which means a lot of people disagree, can someone tell me why this is a bad idea?
That would make it not counter Highlander decks anymore.
Set jaraxus to 20
Make jaraxus untargetable by sac pac bcos its not that Hazelbark is counted as a treant for treant cards
Lord Jaraxxus is a demon. It has the 'demon' tribe tag. Dame Hazelbark is not a treant.