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.
So, that proves Team 5 wants Facestone, not a balanced game...
Priest is by no means my favorite class (I don't really like his passive playstyle to be honest) and I can understand the need for nerfs (because his generation chains can be annoying if he gets lucky with discovers), but why targeting his healing potential (aka the only thing that can stop aggro) instead of pure generation? Why no buffs to compensate the nerfs (like they did with First Day of School or Twin Slice)?
Renew should heal for 5 HP now (to make it Flash Heal on a stick) and Apotheosis should cost 2 mana with that statline.
By doing this, they served 1% of the player base (top legend, where Priest is really strong) and hurt the rest, where aggro dominates everything and now will be even stronger... Well done.
Also - pretty much all the comments made about preist regarding "chain this" and "generate that" apply to no minion mage, with the exception that the mage deck has exceptional card draw, massive mana discounts affecting the whole deck which last for the whole game, and can pretty much control the board and burn your face - all for very little mana.
It really is great watching them draw half their deck for literally 0 mana, kill your minions, generate some spells, and maybeb some minions too...
If the issue with renew is that it can be generated off wandmaker, then why not change him to generate ANY 1 cost spell. That approach would fix a lot of the issues with randomly generated stuff being too predictable (which is a problem that exists in more than one class).
All in all the nerfs seem over the top for priest. Why is it OK to burst down 20 health but not burst heal 20 health? Given that priest has no draw, getting Samuro in hand is in no way consistent either.
Unless they print some decent cards Priest is going to be the dumpster class again.
Also - to the Devs - if you don't want cards to have reduced mana....dont print cards that reduce mana....
Because the issue is Renew, not Wandmaker. The change you're suggesting would technically affect Priest's ability to get Renew from Wandmaker, but it would also affect every other deck that uses Wandmaker in classes where the pool of 1-mana spells aren't particularly problematic.
Wandmaker is the good sort of generation, if you ask me. It has enough constraints so that the pool it draws from is consistent without being reliable. You can't play a Wandmaker and KNOW that you'll get Devolving Missiles, for example, but you know that playing Wandmaker might get you that specific card, so you can try for it. The problem when Renew is in the pool is that Renew then generates even more resources -- maybe a Palm Reading, which generates even MORE resources. It can really get out of hand. If you're running Renew in your deck with that specific gameplan, fine. But being able to luck into it consistently (not reliably, but consistently) via Wandmaker is a problem of Renew, not a problem of Wandmaker.
They've correctly identified that the issue is "Renew does too much to be fair at the 1-mana slot," so "let's move it out of the 1-mana slot" is a perfectly good solution.
A class doesn't need to have the best winrate in order to get nerfed.
Priest got nerfed, because playing against it is one of the most unfun experiences I've had playing Hearthstone and I'm sure a lot of players would agree with that. While RNG is one of the driving factors of HS, this much RNG hurts the experience. EU legend 100-200 ranks are filled with Priest players, because guess what? It's also one of the best decks in the hands of skilled players. I quit playing Standard after getting 150 in EU Legend, simply because of Priest and how infuriating it is to play against it.
They don't nerf decks just because it's unfun to play against. If that was the case then Tickatus would have been nerfed months ago.
But you enjoy being smacked in the face by endless weapon decks?
I bet he only ever plays face decks, that's why he dislikes priest, cant finish the game in 5 turns as usual. Who even came up with 10 mana crystals limit, if 90% of the games dont last 10 turns nowadays, especially in wild?
I enjoy facing Priest. I play a variety of slower / fun mage decks and the Preist games are always fun back and forwards with decisions deciding it. The majority of other games are shamans hitting my face with no answer and Tickatus burning my win condition pretty much every time. Hunter can be a good game of chess, whether he trades or goes face. The other classes are balanced games maybe with the exception of DH as that 8/8 that goes face is just ridiculous, especially as It ignores freeze effects for some reason.
I'd rather play against aggro than against priest. And I hate both. Priest is just boring to play against. Simply boring.
As a Zoolock player (homebrew deck, not self-damage/discard stuff) ... I welcome the changes to Priest so not fun to play against full-heal board wipes 3-4 turns in a row ... Samuro + Apo is a better Reno than Reno against my style of decks!
On the flip side ... the Gibberling nerf takes away my best match-up ... 80%+ win rate vs Druid (granted all, but most are Spell-token). Ah well, time to remove some tech (sac a minion to deal 2 to all enemy minions ... worked like a charm).
I don't think they addressed the problem correctly with these nerfs, The problem with Priest is card generation, not healing. It doesn't feel fair to play against 40-50 cards when you're pretty much limited to the 30 cards in your deck.
The Apoth nerf was a bit heavy handed, but I do agree with all 3. I think the Apoth nerf warrants a mana cost reduction of 1. Also, Renew could use maybe 2 more hp healed.
priest nerfs were uncalled for, they are always helping aggo player and other primitive strategies while hurting control, what a garbage perspective from Blizz
Less healing in priest? As a face hunter player this is lovely news.
Priest nerfs seem unnecessary. Not sure why they’re hurting HEALING in an ALREADY AGGRO meta. Still, I’m overwhelmingly happy about the gibberling nerf so it evens out.
well... but its not true, shaman is not a problem.
These nerfs are done, just like they did for mana wyrm, probably because of the new expansion. Some of the new cards can probably give an insane advantage to Druid and Priest if these cards are not nerfed.
Priest changes were completely unnecessary.
Gibberling though, was completely necessary. Good riddance you fucking furball.
Priest should be nerfed more.