This Week's Nerfs Postponed Till Patch 20.0 Later This Month
Hearthstone's senior game designer just tweeted out that their plans regarding balance changes this week have been postponed till patch 20.0.
Standard
Quote from Alec DawsonStrongly hinted at it, so want to get this out there. We had originally planned on doing a small balance patch this week, but we ran into some issues affecting our timeline. 20.0 is our largest patch to date (Barrens, Core, Classic), and want to make sure it's a smooth launch.
That balance change will go into the 20.0 patch later this month. Overall, we're fairly happy with the current meta but saw an opportunity to shore up some gameplay feelings related to burst damage. Looking forward to MT Ironforge, best of luck to everyone participating!
Wild Mode
Quote from Alec DawsonQuestion: Have you been discussing any Wild nerfs? (Raza and Secret Mage in particular) Or are these only standard-centered?
Answer: The reverts are pretty big so we'll evaluate after all of those go in.
Question: Should we expect the reverts to come out at the same time as Barrens/Core/Classic? Will we get any information on what’s getting reverted beforehand?
Answer: Those will go live with the 20.0 patch yes. Most cards will be reverted or partially reverted, it's fairly aggressive. Should be a good time to bring out your old decks.
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I really hope they finally do something about meta being mostly aggresive deck. I haven't seen combo and control since ages.
Havent seen combo? OTK DH is fairly popular deck right now on high ranks. Its probably the best deck in standard too. Its just a bit hard to play, so its turning down its popularity and stats
OTK spellpower mage is also prevalent in Standard. Don't know what this guy is talking about.
I think I saw DH few times but they simply didnt get to play the combo and the only mages I saw were secret.
Haven't played as much since 3 weeks tho cause I simply refused to play any aggressive decks and ended up dead before turn 10.
What's really left to nerf? Almost all burst got axed or changed to rush. Pen Flinger?
Though it's probably Gibberling Druid. Haven't fought one yet where the game wasn't over turn 1-3.
I'lgynoth
ETC maybe
What "gameplay feelings related to burst damage"? I guess most people would say there's too much, but in Standard, most of it is getting changed with the Core set anyway, like Kill Command, Arcane Missiles, Savage Roar etc. I'd understand it in Wild (like with Secret Mage) but then again, they say they don't want to nerf anything before they see the effects of the reverts.
As for the reverts: When they say that "most cards" get reverted, I wonder if that only affects last year's Standard cards, or also old Wild cards, or even some of this year's card like Imprisoned Antaen, or even rotating Classic cards like Ancient of Lore, Hunter's Mark etc. And when they say that they revert "fairly aggressively", I'm a bit worried that Patches the Pirate could be back in charrrge again soon.
I mostly expect things like Galakrond Shaman getting unnerfed, which is proabably not even that impactful in Wild, but we'll see. If it's really going to be as big as they say, I'm actually excited about it.
If I were a betting man, I would say that Patches is going to be getting Rush instead of Charge. The Hearthstone devs have been very pointed about not creating a new Charge minion (last Charge minion to be introduced to the game is Chillblade Champion in Frozen Throne). Since Patches is used most often in Pirate Warrior, and Warrior has been getting the bulk of the support for the new Rush keyword, making Patches a Rush minion makes more sense.
As for the "reverting" changes, I would expect it on stuff like Bonemare, Ancient of Lore, Keeper of the Grove and Emerald Spellstone. Those cards were nerfed mostly because they were automatic includes in any deck that could use them, rather than being overall problems.
Yes this vagueness and secrecy about new cards and changes does not inspire too much confidence for long time players especially. Maybe they fear massive backlash similar to the rewards track fiasco?
The last time that they released new cards, they unwittingly created a Tier S deck that was cheap to acquire, easily attainable by Turn 7, and singlehandedly warped the format. I think they are being careful about creating another Hysteria combo, and I would rather the Hearthstone devs being careful about what they change rather than introducing random cards with one or two of them warping the format of either Standard or Wild.
if they do not nerf secret mage i lose all my hopes in this mercenary company, i think they will wait until launching the new exp in case the nerfs that the community wants will not lose money with people failing to buy pre-expansion
Play standard if you want regular balance changes and a regularly changing format. That's the point of standard.
learn how to play dude
Secret Mage is arguably the best deck for win rate/wins per hour in Wild. It is so common that you can run a lot of secret hate and reliably get use out of them in a lot of games. Just make sure to tune your deck for what you are playing against most often.
You have to be real stupid like to come up with a "Learn how to play dude" statement. Secret mage, dark glare and raza priest have been untouched for way too long now, the format really needs a change, people are tired of those fucking decks. There isn't a day where i don't face those decks, now.. you might say "bUt jUst TecH aNTi SecRET CarDS" but that is not how it works if you are constantly adding bad cards against other top decks that wont work. Wild needs a damn change!
I haven't lost a single game against secret or burn mage in my life, even back when they still played Aluneth. All I play is burgle rogue, control mage, shitty control priest and control palladin.
On the other hand, my winrate against any DH is in single digit percent since august 2020, does not matter the deck, one game I healed over 60 hp total and still lost to sheer amounts of face damage and cheap removal that stupid class has.
Did they say what they're nerfing? I feel like I missed a post about it, if they did.
Nerfing burst damage? That sounds like what a lot of the core set is already going to do.
So now we know, that the thing we didnt know about, didnt happen. Great!
Oh, but it was "strongly hinted at". How could you NOT know