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.
I'm sure they won't kill the card, and with the year more card will come and most likely support it or create new combos
The stupidity from these devs, never ceases to amaze me. You want to nerf sac pact so demon hunter can go the world championships by itself while the rest of the classes sit hit the auto ban button? And nerfing albatross?? For what possible reason? Every time I play that card in a deck, there are 10 birds at the bottom of my opponents deck because of your garbage coding. what in the fuck are you thinking? The only card that you even mention that should even be looked at is sun strider. But you know, the whole community was shouting from the roof tops at day 1 of how bull shit this card was going to be. None of these changes they claim is going to change a fucking thing. And I’m sick of it. You can’t possibly be this stupid. If you had at least one person Under The age of 35 working on the balance problem, you’d probably be able to get it figured out. I’ve seen much smaller companies do much better things and it’s hysterical to think in comparison. Absolutely disgusted with this post and it’s irrelevance. It’s been so long since they had a successful expansion that I couldnt even be sure to which was the last. Frozen throne? Maybe one in between now and then? Go back to your weekly changes in battle ground or make sure who is focusing on that, does everything in your company because at least that team has a set of balls and creativity
Kaelthas is degenarate card. 6 mana abuse 30 mana in one turn. And the best thing is you can't understand it.
oh no. sold all my cards to craft DH, me gets to Legend. Now new nerfs will hit and I wont be able to Legend anymore... sad life...
I would be happy if they made plague of flames 2 mana at least.
Right now its way to efficient for 1 mana with any invoke card. It's crazy how warlocks can clear your board and play big stuff at the same time even when you have a full board its just frustrating to play a board centered deck vs galakrond warlock. They just have way too much clear and a lot of tempo.
Good suggestion
Very nice Blizzard. This seems to be completely a different approach to the community. Sure, you do faults, but you try to fix them soon.
Lots of players play Wild and it's fun to play a game that could be called GAME and not be killed at 4th turn without any possibility to counter the opponent and be dead having seen just 6 cards of your deck...
Quest mage is without interaction and darkest hour is insane and stupid. Play 3 cards, and win is not a fun game.
4/7 that can draw 20 cards and deal 25 damage summon 2 5/5 make 20+ heal/armor on turn 4-6 is completely INSANE and not healty.
So, thank you to remember that there are more competitive scenes out there. Sac pact is of course wrong because of zephris that can kill a demon for 0 mana. Lock and DH will always be undevalue because of that. And Jarry is of course unplayable EVER with this card.
Very good Blizzy. <3 Good ideal changes.
Take your sponsored ass out of here. You don’t have a clue what you are talking about. These are some of the stupidest changes I’ve ever seen.
Thanks for your comment. But probably there are more people that support my "sponsored" idea than yours. Sorry.
as far as I welcome balance changes in wild, I would recommend some nerfes to resurrection cards (Priest) as well. Many Combo-Decks only emerge because of the immense value resurrection priest can create
Res Priest is dead in Wild for over a year now, even before the Barnes nerf it was only mid-tier anymore.
well, it does not really matter but are we playing the same game? I mean, between rank 10 and 5 (old laddersystem) on EU the ladder was crowded over and over with rezz priests. Fortunately, now it is less.
I would love to see Jaraxxus being reworked. I hope they'll uncap his health total.
My expectation for sac pact is cost=1mana and Jaraxus won't be considered a demon target for it anymore
Will we get full dust refunds for these?
I mean, yes from those that can be dusted, sac pact and kael (the non golden one) won't give you dust cause you can't dust them, and if they nerf some of the initiate dh set will be the same story
Open the Waygate: Should require 10 Spells that didn't start in your deck. (Up from 6). Also, remove the interaction between Time Warp and Archmage Vargoth, so that extra turns can't stack.
Bloodbloom: Should cost 5 Mana (Up from 2), more in line with Cho'gall. Even without the Darkest Hour interaction, the card is straight up broken right now, they can never print a new 10-cost spell for Warlock with Bloodbloom around as it currently is.
The biggest issue with Bad Luck Albatross for me, is that it counters both Pure Paladin and Spell mage a LOT harder than highlander decks. You need to draw BOTH albatross to get your deck to work properly again. And these decks are already weaker than top tier highlander decks. And i'm pretty sure they won't change the deathrattle effect. They will just bump up the mana cost by 1 or lower its attack. So the issue won't be resolved.
Spell mage is one of the least fun decks to play against anyways. But making it out one in the deck instead of two, would probably be good
Honestly, if their intent with Albatross was as an anti-highlander tech card, then all they need to do is make the tokens draw a card - either when drawn, or when played. If they do that, then it tanks their potential as a griefing card by decks that want to play as many as possible.