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.
chat not to shit on anybody's hate for blizzard, but what if in the next expansion they print a bunch of good priest cards and it becomes better in a way that's not "just healing"
I think the game really needs another mid-range deck that is good. Not enough of them currently.
and what if not ???
A Priest class identity that EXCLUDES healing? With that hp? Yeah, right. That would be the ultimate fail.
This shows how little you care about and know about the game. What do you mean no interaction with the ramp Druid? Any Aggro/tempo deck just vomits all over it. Spell Druid was FAR and away the best Druid deck, and is one of the best decks in the meta.
You can always spot the people that play decks that spend the first 5-6 turns “doing nothing.” Always complaining about stuff like otk control warrior, big druid, etc.
I took a big break from hearthstone after forged in the barrens because the game was getting a little stale for me and the last hero i need to get 1000 wins is DH. The DH deathrattle decks were fun for a bit but wore out quickly for me. I've been playing again for about the last 3 weeks and these nerfs completely missed the mark in my opinion. When i heard that druid getting nerfed i assumed it was this idiotic ramp druid that you have zero interaction with all game and then they gain 24 armor while simultaneously putting 8 cost minions on the board. or they ramp up to a the new version of spitful summoner and all of the sudden you have to have lethal or trade into some massive minions. My guess is they let the interns take over to manage the expansion while the seasoned devs went on summer vacation. Because these nerfs won't fix shit.
I cant believe it; i rly cant believe they nerved fucking priest while Hunter, Shaman & DH are all over the laddder just killing everyone turn 5 or later with three 8 Mana windfury King Crushs in a row
and everyone talkin about priest while mage doing the same shit with no costs at all and drawing all day and they can burn u and control the board also
Why don't they nerf aggro decks too now? How is a priest supposed to survive these hyper aggro decks now?
Shaman and hunter can now just go face and ignore everything and still win. Apotheosis was the only reason aggro traded his minions......
Good way to destroy the Hearthsthone experience. If you really think priest is so strong then buff other classes, now the priest's strong point was healing and now its gone, it has no identity anymore. Even Paladin heals more then priest now.
Get ready for disgusting aggro only meta.
Was looking forward to next expansion, but that is all gone now. I hope this was a joke or a mistake.
Cuz aggro is not a problem now.
So meta made of 100% aggro isn't a problem, huh?
It isn't. Midrange decks dominate atm.
suck it face hunterd
Oh boy, Blizz hit right on the money with these nerfs, love them all. Renew for 2 kills Wandmaker in Priest (good riddance), and Apo nerf kills Samuro combo (also GOOD RIDDANCE). Getting 4-5 Renews every game and healing to full while cleaning a board was NOT fine by any measure.
Gibberling was pure degeneracy just waiting to break the game, dont see how they could have changed it w/o killing it, but token druid will still be great vs aggro so its fine.
kinda off topic but I'm really disappointed about that Nozdormu quest. I was expecting another quest besides regular daily ones. We have a special slot for legendary quests, so why not give us an additional quest once a month? Is that too much c'mon...
Noz quest replaces the daily quest, so instead of getting a random daily we get noz quest instead.
It really seems greedy, all we get is +500 xp a month, which seems like a joke.
100% agreed, really didn't like this decision.
The ones who decide not to do the quest if the quest was a legendary quest would gain 0 xp
The ones who decide not to do the quest will lose 500 xp if the reroled quest is worth 1000 xp
As a Wild player, I don't really care too much about these nerfs, but it's nice to see that the turn 1-2 aggro druid power spike has been limited.
I think this badly hurts token druid. The entire deck is built to scam the game by turn 2.
The renew nerf makes it so wandmaker can't give you one and also so palm reading doesn't make it free. Bigger deal than it looks like that 1 mana bump
The meta is already healthy before these changes, so there's really no reason to complain if you think they targeted the "wrong" cards (irony quotes because there were no "right" cards that urgently needed to change) or if you think they didn't go far enough.
I suspect this patch is more about preparing for the upcoming meta than fixing the existing one.