Patch 20.8.2 - Balance Changes for Priest and Druid - Bugfixes
The Balance Changes coming in tomorrow, Thursday July 15th, for Priest and Druid, as well as some bug fixes. Check out the changes below!
This Patch Is Now LIVE!
Quote from BlizzardThe 20.8.2 patch, releasing on July 15, includes changes for three cards in Standard and three bug fixes for Battlegrounds.
Standard Balance Updates
Apotheosis
- Old: Give a minion +2/+3 and Lifesteal. → New: Give a minion +1/+2 and Lifesteal.
Dev Comment: We’re doing two Priest changes, targeting the burst healing available in the class and their generation capabilities. Let's start with Apotheosis—we are moving the buff down to +1/+2 to hit the card's general power and combo capabilities. While healing will always be a strength of Priest, we want to reduce the urgency felt when dealing with Priest's minions. Currently, it can feel like you must remove every Priest minion because of the threat Apotheosis poses. A slight reduction in the buff here should lessen that urgency and make the minions post-Apotheosis easier to deal with. The other side of this nerf is the Samuro + Apotheosis combo. The punishment for playing minions into this combo is too much at the moment, so while we'd like to keep some of that tension of resource commitment, we don't want the punishment to be a full heal for the opponent. The reduction in attack here helps get that combo into a healthier push/pull state.
Renew
- Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]
Dev Comment: Renew is going to 2 mana. Heading into this patch, we wanted to knock some of Priest's generation potential as one of our main goals in Hearthstone is to have the cards you chose to include in your deck matter. We decided to change Renew specifically because we believe this change makes the largest impact towards curbing the chains of generation in Priest. At 2 mana, Renew has to be more thoughtful inclusion during deckbuilding, won't be generated by Wandmaker, and takes another mana reduction to get to 0. While Priest's identity looks different in future expansions, we wanted to take this opportunity to reign in their card generation and build a better match experience for both players.
Gibberling
- Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]
Dev Comment: Gibberling is moving to 2 mana. Currently Gibberling is the cause of many "non-games", matches that are heavily lopsided in the early game and can have their outcome decided far too early. We want to lower the frequency of this occurrence and Gibberling at 2 mana should result in many more games where opponents can respond to an early board of this little menace.
The cards listed above will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the 20.8.2 patch goes live.
Game Improvements & Bug Fixes
- Updated the wording of Kurtrus Ashfallen’s fully upgraded Battlegrounds Hero Power to clarify its one-time completion (no functional change).
- Updated Archdruid Hamuul in Battlegrounds so that when your minion types are tied, he will not refresh Bob’s Tavern with minion types that are not in the pool.
- Adjusted Darkmoon Prizes to offer better Prizes for players on the bottom half of the leaderboard.
United in Stormwind Card List & Expansion Guide
Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated Card List.
might be the laziest and most inelegant killing of cards I've seen blizzard do in a while.
what ? they always do the same thing over the years
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its so good to hear aggro player cry about boardclear.
Immolation Aura Explosive Trap Consecration Holy Nova Lightning Storm Hellfire
Literally 7/10 classes have a card that's 4 mana or less that does 2 damage or more to the opponent's board. Expect it.
nobody play duels
The priest nerfs feel really heavy handed - Apotheosis could have been redone as +1/+4, and Renew as 2 health, rather than 2 mana.
IMO it's Palm Reading and the interaction of lifesteal with Samuro that are actually broken.
I agree with apotheosis, but the problem of renew was that you can generate 1 mana spells very easy. Making it a 2 mana that restores 4 could be ok but deffinetly not at 1
MAGE ??? HELLO ????
I can only think that Priest and Druid are going to do well in the next expansion(s). For what other reason would they not adjust Ele shaman or DH or the RNG shit show Mage. Neither priest nor token Druid are that worrisome on the ladder rn.
I just don’t see solid logic in Blizz’s nerfs… not for last several and certainly not now.
Go n look for winrates in high leyend, i dont care if in bronce or even diamond people dont know how to play
I have 20 + copies of each nerfed card plus 2 golden copies of each. I will keep the shiny ones and net 3200+ dust each. Then I’ll dust staple wild non-gold legendaries for The 400 and use the free dust to make those legendaries golden. Nothing like 300+ golden legendaries in your complete collection. Solid gold tier one decks for every class in wild …….I love nerfs….they always expand my goal of collecting goldens.
Stupid Blizzars as always
and now you killed priest.. the only class i play...
It's not killed because two cards got slightly nerfed, relax
apotheosis is the only card that make us survive against aggro...
5-6 renews per game did help a lot
Or Condemn, Holy Nova, Hysteria, Devouring Plague, Void Flayer, Xyrella...
wtf are you talking about , you must be a noob to think that this kill priest.
noob im not.. i have more than 4000 ranked wins with priest; i dont know if it kills it but it makes it harder.. i was raging before.. ill test today.