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.
So Mecha Jaraxxas is more of a mech than a demon?
It's fine he's a demon, but he should lose that tag the moment he becomes a hero. It would benefit the game if Jaraxxus wasn't killable with sac pact once he's become a hero card. If he's summoned in a way his battlecry doesn't trigger fine, but as a hero card he simply shouldn't have any tags.
He is still a minion that replace your hero, the sac pact interaction work as intended, which I would do is make him a hero card, so, no more demon tag, and it wouldn't be a minion, still set your max heal in 15 (or 20 as some people sugested) and to equip the 3/8 weapon, + the bonus armor from a hero card would make it even less dangerous to play.
My thoughts:
It's about goddamn time Open the Waygate got the nerf stick. Not fun when you're playing a two person card game and your opponent plays Solitaire right in front of you. Same thing with Kel'Thas - it's a pain in the ass to deal with in Wild, let alone Standard, and Druids can play an absurd amount of shit with it.
Battlefiend is one card I see being nerfed for Demon Hunter, probably reducing it's health to 1. The other card I can see them nerf is Twin Slice so that it and the card that it generates is 1 mana, putting it in range of Skulking Geist. I doubt that Priestess of Fury will be hit with a nerf.
The Albatross is so goddamn annoying, glad to see it being nerfed.
Jaraxxus more than likely is going to be turned into a Death Knight for Warlock, because the reason why he doesn't see play now is because you have to bet on them not having Repentence, Sacrificial Pact or Snipe (a card that also affects them, probably Explosive Runes too) because Jaraxxus is a minion first.
If they nerf sac pact too hard, the meta will go from 75% demon hunter to 100% demon hunter. Demon hunter is already broken enough as it is, but if you nerf the only thing partially keeping it in place, floodgates are fully opened and it will literally be free Legend rank in 1 day for anyone that has half a brain using demon hunter.
I think their changing the jaraxus sac pact part only
For demon hunters, the post says "expect 1 or 2 cards to see a change". So hopefully those changes will help offsetting a sac pact nerf.
Bad Luck Albatross Is so annoying especially Priest reviving it then giving it reborn when you running a no duplicate deck or all spell mage deck.
Need to change Sac Pact to friendly demon only. From WoW Warlock game-play you sacrificed your demon pet for the health (ie the sacrifice)
Also, while the interaction with Jaraxxus has been well documented as stupid it also negatively impacts the new legendary Magtheridon. Really sucks when you pull off the activation and boom a 12/12 removed for 0 mana.
Thoughts:
* I think a slight Sac Pact change is fine. It's a tech card, that just happens to be quite good because demon hunter is quite good, and even though it's not useless otherwise (in a Galakrond deck, at least), it doesn't have enough other use to make it not-a-tech-card. I think a tax of 2-3 mana if you target a demon you don't control is fair.
* Bad Luck Albatross and Frenzed Felwing would be fine changes. Felwing should just take some tweaking with numbers (cost more, limit reduction, something like that), whereas Albatross is just way too much better than Weasel Tunneler. If it's primarily meant to be an anti-highlander card, they should make it similar to bombs and Ambush, which also worked in that manner (it shuffles 2+ cards into your deck, but you draw another when you draw that one - so it still turns off highlander, but can't be used troll opponents).
* Kael'thas - I get their frustration. It really is an interesting card, but allows for some very degenerate stuff right now. Limiting it to 1 free spell a turn might be ok balance wise, but would probably kill it off in standard at least (and I can't imagine too many people playing it in any format just to get one free 10 mana spell on turn 6). Limiting it to 2 spells might work, or increasing its base cost to make it harder to combo on the turn you play it. They have to tread carefully here.
* RE: Jaraxxus. Lol. They're kidding themselves if they think he'll see competitive play just from changing Sac Pact. Also, they can easily change that interaction without totally gimping Sac Pact into the ground.
* Open the Waygate - this has been my go-to mage deck for a while now (I have mage-1000 so I rarely play the class as I work on others), but I realised the other day you can still OTK with Anton into Maiev (with the caveat that you need to survive until he awakens, and you need either a discount, coin or Manasaber), which means you can build the deck without including a bunch of random-spell generators. So it's very possible the deck would stick around.
* Bloodbloom - seems like a fine card to change; while Darkest Hour is the way it has most been abused, it really does limit design space if they're ever thinking about wild. They could never print an expensive spell that summoned a large demon or anything like that, as it's too backbreaking to face that on turn 2 (or turn 1 with coin). They'll probably increase the cost (to something like 4), double how much health you lose, or limit how much you can use the effect.
Today's announcement confirms what I have been saying.. Blizzard really needs to be careful with cards that cost 0, can cost 0 or make other cards cost 0.
"Oh no, how dare demon hunters have a potentially sub-50% winrate against one class running one card that's pretty lackluster in any other matchup!". Seriously, even with Sac Pact as it is right now the most popular tempo demon hunter deck (the one that would actually run double Antaen and Priestess) has a 65% win rate across about 7000 games.
I'm not even saying that it shouldn't be changed slightly - but it's not because demon hunters need a freaking chance. XD
Here's what I think of about these cards:
-Sacrifical Pact : Back then, Demon is sort of an "exclusive" tribe for warlock (let's be honest here, most of the neutral Demona are not good). But with the release of Demon Hunter, the card becomes a counter to Demon Hunter when Demon Hunter dominating the metagame in standard. But since they nerf Demon Hunter, Demon Hunter get bullied by Warlock the most with this one card alone. So it makes sense to give a little chance to Demon Hunter to be able to win against Warlock.
-Bad Luck Albatross : I guess they intended the card to be used as a counter to highlander, pure, and spell-only deck. But it turns out that delaying your opponent's draw twice is pretty disruptive against most deck.
-Frenzied Feywing : Ok, I thought the card would be a problem back when it first came out since Galakrond Warrior can make it either 0 Mana 7/7, or 0 Mana 3/3 on turn 2 with Ritual Chopper. But apparently, that is not a problem back then, instead, the card is problematic and becomes the developers attention recently. I am not entirely sure why since I haven't seen this card in Ranked, but maybe that's because my Rank is not high enough.
-Kael'thas Sunstrider : I guess they under the impression that player can only use the effect once per turn. I mean, every spell has a cost right. Well, I think they forgot about the existence of Twinspell and Twin Slice for Demon Hunter, and the the fact that some class has an access to a massive card draw. Thus, the card becomes a part of the most OTK in both Standard and Wild.
I don't want to talk about Open the Waygate and Bloodbloom since I never play in Wild Format.
So that is my opinion.
Frenzied Felwing is most problematic in Demon Hunter where It's really easy for them to play it turn 2 or 3. Most if not all the Aggro versions run it at least in Diamond 5-1.
Blizzard 2017:
Blizzard 2018:
Blizzard 2019:
Blizzard 2020: Exodia Mage isn’t healthy for the game.
Do you not play much wild? The current popular quest mage deck isn't even close to exodia mage.
Yeah, but it plays exactly the same. It doesn't really matter if they have endless fireballs or not, 3 turns in a row is basically a win. Vargoth is what needs a fix. He's a massive pain in the ass in this and Rez Priest.
We call it quest highlander,/reno mage, but its just another way to say "exodia mage"
-get vargoth
-get the 2 alex
Or
-get the giants.
Its pretty much it
Priest is kinda bad now after seance and mass hysteria is wild now?