Theorycrafting The Upcoming Hearthstone Balance Changes – Which Cards Could Get Nerfed And How?

The nerf patch is coming. However, this isn’t really something that needed confirmation. If we look to the past, we had a balance patch roughly 2 months (sometimes less, sometimes more) into the expansion for the last few expansions. I think it’s pretty clever, because it serves two purposes. Not only it addresses the balance issues, but also forces a meta shift, which makes more people interested in the game again. For a good reason – players don’t like to see the same stuff over and over again for a few months in a row.

Right now, we have a big problem. The Witchwood’s power level was relatively low when compared to the Year of the Mammoth expansions, especially the final one – Kobolds & Catacombs. Which means that despite the rotation, not much has changed and the meta, while not the same, feels similar to the one we had in Kobolds & Catacombs (after the nerf patch).

The balance changes have been announced, check out what Blizzard decided to nerf: Upcoming Balance Changes: Nerfs to Naga Sea Witch, Spiteful Summoner, Dark Pact, Possessed Lackey, Call to Arms, and The Caverns Below!

While they can, and probably will, address that issue in the upcoming expansion, by releasing the right cards (no more cards to support the stronger archetypes, additional tech cards to fight against them), we still have three months until the next release, and that’s a long time. So a balance patch is imminent – it was announced to come out after the HCT Summer Playoffs, so late in May. We still don’t know which cards will get hit and how, so far we’ve only got a list of cards they’re paying closer attention to and consider changing. Those cards are: Naga Sea Witch, Sunkeeper Tarim, Call to Arms, Baku Paladin Hero Power, Spiteful Summoner, Possessed Lackey, Bloodreaver Gul'dan, Dark Pact, Kobold Librarian, Quest Rogue, and Doomguard.

It does not mean that all of the cards will get changed, or that the list is final and they won’t decide to hit something else instead. So far we can only theorize… and that’s what I’m going to do in this article. Take a closer look at the most problematic cards and offer some potential solutions.

P.S. Big thanks to Argentan for the yesterday’s talk. We discussed a lot of the potential balance changes, their pros and cons, and some of the ideas here were inspired by him.

Naga Sea Witch – A Buff That Wasn’t A Buff

Let’s start the list with something Wild, one of the most discussed cards lately. Naga Sea Witch rotated into the Wild format over a year ago. It was never a problematic card back when it was in Standard – I’ve seen it maybe a few times on the ladder. However, mid-2017 there was a change to how mana cost reductions apply (as well as different order changes) – they’ve streamlined everything and made it more consistent. Under that “consistency fix”, a massive buff to the card was hidden. Instead of, like before, applying the 5 mana flat cost to everything AT THE END, so after any other reductions, after the change it applied it FIRST, before any other mana cost manipulations. The main issue here was the synergy with all kinds of Giants.

Giants are balanced by their high mana cost. They get cheaper when certain conditions are met, but the basic cost prevents them from being overpowered. However, Naga Sea Witch altered that a bit. Since the Giants’ cost is first reduced to 5, and only then their extra mana reductions apply, it’s very easy to play them for free now, even as soon as Turn 5 (after dropping Sea Witch). For example – Molten Giant can be played for 0 mana at 25 health, and Mountain Giant can be played for 0 with only 5 cards in the hand. Because of that, new decks built around the combo were created. I won’t argue whether they’re overpowered or not, but one thing is sure – they’re very unfun to play against and most of the Wild players can agree.

However, instead of simply reverting the change, those decks have been infesting the ladder for almost 9 months now. I’ve seen dozens of arguments saying that it shouldn’t be this way, that “fun” is more important than consistency, and if they don’t want to revert the change and make it inconsistent with the others, they should just add a new effect instead. It got to the point that one Wild player paid for a Reddit ad saying that the Naga Sea Witch should get nerfed, and stated that he won’t take it down until it happens (a huge discussion followed, which you can find here). And I think that it was really successful – it actually got the devs to respond.

The card should absolutely get changed and anyone playing Wild more seriously will tell you that. The strategy is very high-roll’y (something like Barnes on Turn 4 vs Big Priest, but taken even further) and straight up unfun to play against. It’s not consistent enough to pull it off every game, obviously, but the games against the deck are basically decided by draw RNG. Will they get their Naga Sea Witch combo? Or will you find your AoE board wipe in time (if you have one)? The best way to handle this card would be to simply revert the “consistency changes” and make the flat 5 mana cost for every card apply at the END, after all of the other mana reductions are included.

Cube & Control Warlock – Which Cards Should Get Hit?

This is actually a very interesting topic. Cubelock and Control Warlock are some of the strongest and most consistent decks on the Standard ladder right now and they absolutely should get changed. The rotation didn’t affect them enough (Mistress of Mixtures and N'Zoth, The Corruptor were the only two cards they lost, but neither of them was absolutely necessary to play them), and they’re dominating the ladder right now. Yes, they might not take the highest spot on the tier lists (that’s either Even or Murloc Paladin most of the time), but that’s mostly because the whole meta is tailored around them. Despite all of the decks teching weapon destruction (to counter Skull of the Man'ari), Silence (to counter Possessed Lackey and to a certain extent other cards such as Voidlord), Skulking Geist (vs Dark Pact) and trying to put some burst damage in so they can finish the game quickly, slow Warlock decks are still staying strong

But as you can see, there are LOTS of problematic cards, and picking the right ones to hit will be very difficult. Optimally, we don’t want to kill those decks – they’re really fun and rewarding to play. But at the same time, it’s important to hit them where it hurts. Here are the most problematic cards from those decks and some of the ideas for their nerfs:

• Dark Pact – Health was always one of the Warlock’s biggest issues and the reason why the class was balanced. It has some really powerful cards, and great Hero Power, but has to pay part of their price in health. That’s cool – it’s kind of a high risk, high reward class. It had a lot of healing issues in the past, and printing SOME ways to heal was important, but they’ve basically went overboard by printing both Dark Pact and Lesser Amethyst Spellstone in a single expansion. Dark Pact in particular is a crazy powerful card, even though it might not look that way. You’re paying 1 mana to do what you want (which is sacrificing one of the minions with Deathrattle, which you WANT to kill) and you get 8 points of healing on top of that. There are two ways this card can be addressed – either reduce the amount of healing (to let’s say 5 or 6) or increase it’s mana cost (probably to 2). The first nerf would decrease the deck’s survivability, while the second one would make it more difficult to combo with Lackey or Cube, either of which is fine.
• Kobold Librarian – A card that a lot of people are sleeping on, because I rarely see it getting mentioned when it comes to the potential nerfs. But that’s just wrong – Kobold Librarian is one of the most powerful, if not THE most powerful card Warlock has right now. Getting it in your mulligan increases the chance to win by a lot. It makes the deck more consistent by thinning it, and puts a small body on the board as soon as Turn 1. Plus, the damage part is often an upside and not a downside, since it upgrades the Spellstone too. My idea would be to make it a little more punishing to play, increasing the damage taken from 2 to 3, just like they did with Flame Imp in the past. It might not seem like a lot, but trust me, every point of health matters when facing an aggressive deck. On top of that, right now it basically pays its life cost back after upgrading Spellstone, and it wouldn’t after the change. Alternatively, reducing the stats to 1/1 would be fair – at 2/1 it’s much easier to get a good early trade with it, which is a part of its strength.
• Defile – One of the reasons why slow Warlock decks absolutely demolish board-based Aggro builds, Defile is one of the strongest board clears in the entire game. Upping the mana cost to 3 wouldn’t really make it unplayable, but would make the deck more fair in those matchups.
• Doomguard – Doomguard is a very likely candidate for a nerf for a very simple reason – Blizzard doesn’t like high power Charge minions. Even though I’m not a big fan of nerfing Classic & Basic cards when it’s the new cards that cause them to be broken, but let’s still look at the potential changes that can be made. One of the most common, and frankly interesting options is to put make Charge a part of his Battlecry. If you summon him from the hand, ignoring the Discard part of the card’s cost, it will also get weaker. If you play him from your hand – then you get the Charge, but you also need to discard things. It might seem that it won’t affect decks such as Zoo Warlock, but it actually will slightly – if Charge is a part of his Battlecry, he won’t get charge when re-summoned with Bloodreaver Gul'dan. Alternative option is to change Charge to Rush. You will still be able to cheat it, but you won’t be able to combo your opponent down – only use it to clear the board. However, that would most likely make it unusable in Cube Warlock (since hitting face is the main reason you run it), while nerfing Zoo at the same time, so the first option seems better.
• Possessed Lackey & Skull of the Man'ari – I actually think that those two are the main culprits and should be the first cards to get nerfed. Both Doomguard and Voidlord are balanced cards if you play them in a “fair” way, from your hand. No one is saying “oh my god, that Warlock dropped Voidlord on Turn 9, what can I possibly do to deal with such a big body so early in the game”, simply because the card was balanced to be played for 9 mana (honestly, it’s even on the weaker side other than against Aggro player who forgot to tech in Silence). Similarly, Doomguard dropped from the hand is sometimes the right play, but you wouldn’t run it if that was your main game plan – there is a very high chance to discard some vital strategy pieces, such as DK Hero. The best way to nerf those would probably be upping their mana cost, even by one. The thing is, those cards are really problematic on the curve, but the later you get into the game, the worse they get. Not only you have a higher chance to be able to answer them (with Silence, weapon removal etc.), but the impact of big Demons is WAY higher on Turn 5/6 than it is later. It would also make the Skull into Cube + Dark Pact combo impossible on the curve.
• Voidlord – Like I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think this card deserves a nerf. However, it really depends on their approach – whether they will go ahead and nerf the Demons (Doomguard, Voidlord) or the cards that cheat them out. I personally think that the second option is better. But if they decide to nerf Voidlord, it would most likely be a stats nerf (nerfing the mana cost is pointless, since you cheat them out so often anyway). For example, I could see them changing it to a 2/7 and lowering the mana cost to 8 to compensate for that when you play it from your hand. It would be worse to cheat out on Turn 5/6 (especially the attack part – there are so many 3 health minions that the 2 damage Taunt wouldn’t clear in a single hit), but the reduced mana cost might somewhat compensate the reduced stats. Tampering with the stats would kill the card’s flavor, though – because 3/9 stats come from the tripling stats of Voidwalker (three of which he Deathrattles into).
• Bloodreaver Gul'dan – And finally, another incredibly powerful card in the Warlock’s arsenal. After you think that you’ve won, removed all of their threats, they just play DK Hero and get them all back again. There are two things that could be changed when it comes to this card. First part is the Battlecry. Summoning all of the Demons that died means that it’s very easy to fill your board with big Demons you’ve cheated out. But what if it summoned all of the Demons you’ve PLAYED this game instead? Yes, played, not summoned. So any Demon that you play from you hand would be re-summoned (meaning that, for example, it would still be the same card in Zoo), but the demons that you’ve Recruited, or pulled out from your hand, wouldn’t be. The slight upside here is that if multiple Voidlords have died, it would resummon only the big 3/9 bodies and not the Voidwalkers – but since you wouldn’t be able to cheat them out, that would be a fair exchange. Another way to change the card is nerfing the Hero Power a bit. The Battlecry part is powerful, yes, but it’s not the only reason to play the card. I won some games by just playing it with NO Demons to resummon (because they got Hexed, Polymorphed, Psyshic Screamed etc.) and won the game thanks to the upgraded Hero Power. 3 damage + 3 healing per turn is massive, it either lets you have a much better board control than your opponent, or put him on a clock, like you would with an upgraded Hunter Hero Power (but while healing yourself at the same time). If they don’t want to change the Battlecry, Hero Power could get nerfed to 2 damage (and thus 2 healing). It would still keep the flavor of “sucking the life out of your opponent”, but it would be more reasonable.

Of course, Blizzard should NOT nerf each one of those cards, because that would basically kill the deck. Hitting 2 or 3 of them should be enough to put it back to a reasonable power level.

Paladin – Nerfing Even Might Buff Odd

Even Paladin is one of the strongest, if not the strongest deck on the ladder right now. However, Genn Greymane‘s Hero Power cost reduction is not actually the main reason why it is so strong. It’s good, because it can have a cheaper Hero Power WHILE maintaining most of the Paladin’s powerful tools. Yes, it loses some cool cards, such as Righteous Protector or Divine Favor, but it retains the most powerful options, such as Call to Arms (with only 2-drops – so it pulls 6 mana worth of stuff from your deck straight to the board) and Sunkeeper Tarim (I’d say that it’s the #1 Legendary in the entire game right now).

However, they should be really careful about how they approach Even Paladin nerfs right now. Because remember that each mana cost change might make it playable in the OTHER build, so Odd Paladin, instead. And while a 5 mana Call to Arms most likely wouldn’t be too strong (since Odd can only put 1-drops in – pulling three 1-drops for 5 mana seems pretty balanced), nerfing Tarim to 7 mana would be a massive buff to Odd Paladin. It would become an auto-include, because the card is honestly still incredibly powerful at 7 mana, and it’s even better in the Odd build than in the Even one, since it’s more based around flooding the board.

So, Call to Arms to 5 would probably be a good idea. While we’re at it, one of the things that annoy me most about the card is pulling out a Knife Juggler as the first minion and throwing knives immediately. It adds even more unnecessary RNG to the card – getting Juggler as the first card means 2 extra additional random damage (which is HUGE, especially if it kills some minion), and pulling it as the last card does nothing. I think that this part should just get removed. If you have Knife Juggler on the board already, then by all means, throw you knives, but not when you pull it from CtA.

But what about Tarim? Well, for one, they could up the mana cost to 8. That would still make it unplayable by the Even Paladin, but would do the job. Is 8 too much? To be honest, I think it might still be playable, even at 8 mana, just not as broken as it is right now. Then, nerfing the stats would be a good way to handle it too. Reducing the attack to 2 and/or health to 6 would make it much more manageable. It would still be a powerful board control tool, but it would be easier to get through. Right now, if you have no removals in your hand, you need to run THREE minions to clear the 3/7 Taunt and all of your minions die. Reducing its attack to 2 would mean that Paladin has to work hard and finish those 3/1’s off, or alternatively reducing its health to 6 would make getting through it easier.

Another way would be changing it to affect only the opponent’s board. Right now, Tarim is often used as a swing card even if your opponent has no big minions. Buffing those 1/1’s and other small stuff on your side of the board is often the strongest part of this card. With this change, Tarim would still be a good control tool, but he would no longer be so insane in all kinds of token strategies.

Are there any other Paladin cards that need to get nerfed? While not exactly a Paladin card, but I could see a Rockpool Hunter getting nerfed. When focusing on Even Paladin too much, we sometimes forget that Murloc Paladin is also a thing and it’s a very powerful deck. A nerf that would specifically target Even build might not be enough of a hit against Murloc Paladin. And Rockpool Hunter is a great card to change, since it’s borderline broken. Making it a 2/2 would make it fair. It still has a Murloc tag and still can give +1/+1 to another Murloc, so it would still be great play in many situations. But right now you can even drop it as a vanilla 2/3 on Turn 2 and it’s still good, since you can follow with some Murloc buff.

Iksar also mentioned the Baku Paladin Hero Power. This is interesting – right now, Odd Paladin is not the strongest build, but it’s still good. However, it’s heavily held back by the Warlocks – if Warlocks and Even Paladin get nerfed, it might raise to the top. The deck’s main strength is Hero Power – having the ability to summon 2x 1/1 with Hero Power every turn makes it insane at flooding the board over and over again. There are some ways to handle that without completely destroying the deck, though. One idea would be to change 2x 1/1 to 1x 2/2, or even 1x 3/1. That would still be a nice upgrade to the Hero Power, but it wouldn’t make the board flooding so easy, and thus would decrease the power level of some of the other cards, such as Stormwind Champion or Level Up!. Talking about Level Up, it’s one of the most powerful cards in the deck, since all the 1/1’s you summon are Silver Hand Recruits. So another way to handle it would be leaving it as 2x 1/1, but renaming the tokens, just like playing Vilefin Inquisitor does. Those would no longer be Silver Hand Recruits, so you wouldn’t be able to utilize Level Up! Other board flood synergies would still be there, but it would make the strongest one unusable. Right now, it might not seem that the change is necessary, but I wouldn’t mind them nerfing the Hero Power slightly “just in case”.

Spiteful Summoner – Does It Need A Nerf?

I might go against the popular opinion here, but I don’t think that Spiteful Summoner is an overpowered card. Spiteful Druid seemed to be insanely powerful just two weeks ago, but it’s already going down in terms of popularity AND win rate. Notably, it’s stronger at lower ranks than at higher ranks, because let’s be honest, it’s not a difficult deck. While there are some difficult decisions, most of the time you can play stuff on curve and do just fine.

However, in my opinion, the main issue with the deck is not how strong it is, but how unfun it is to play against. We had a similar issue with Big Priest already – even though the deck had roughly sub-50% win rate at times, I still hated every second of playing against it, simply because them getting a Turn 4 Barnes was simply infuriating.

Spiteful Summoner decks share a similar story – huge influence of draw RNG. A big part of the deck’s power is concentrated in a single card, so whether you draw it or not is a big deal. Similarly, whether your opponent will find an answer or not in time is also a big deal. If I can just Shadow Word: Death that big minion, it’s not a big deal (unless they roll a Tyrantus, which is another story). But if I don’t draw my removal, there is literally nothing I can do, no matter how well I play, I just lose because they had on-curve Spiteful. That’s not fun to play against. On top of that, another unfun thing is that the Neutral core around the Spiteful decks is just… boring. Playing it or against it isn’t particularly exciting.

And for those reasons, I think that Spiteful Summoner should be changed. If not, we will most likely see it for the rest of this Standard year, in different classes, but with roughly similar decks built around a Neutral core, just playing a few different class cards. There are some ways to approach this problem, of course.

The first and most obvious change would be increasing the card’s mana cost to 7 or 8. The truth is – Spiteful is most broken when dropped on Turn 6. Each another turn reduces the card’s impact, and increases the chance that the big minion summoned by Spiteful will be answered.

Another common idea is to force him to burn the spell he rolls, similarly to how Grand Archivist works. If you already got a big minion from that spell, you shouldn’t be able to use it. But I feel like this one is too punishing – deck like Spiteful Druid already plays only two copies of UI, one of which you often draw in the early/mid game. It would leave you with one big spell and three cards that want to utilize it. Grand Archivist wouldn’t make a cut, that’s for sure, but even second Spiteful would most likely be a whiff.

However, I like another approach to the problem – capping the maximum cost of a minion you can summon. For example, at 6. So, no matter if you roll a 6 mana spell, 8 mana spell or a 10 mana spell, you will always summon a 6 mana minion. That 6 might be changed to 7 or 8, I don’t have enough time to analyze each mana cost and pick the most balanced one right now. But the point is, what makes Spiteful Summoner so frustrating right now is summoning the 10-drops, where you basically have no low rolls. 8/8 is the WORST thing you can roll, you have a 40% chance to roll a 12/12, and specifically a 20% chance to roll a Tyrantus. That’s the most broken part of this card. Capping the cost would make card easier to deal with, but it would also make the decks more flexible in terms of spells they can play. They still wouldn’t want small spells, but for example, Spiteful Druid might run Spreading Plague,

Quest Rogue – Killing The Deck… Again

When they nerfed Quest Rogue back in the Journey to Un’Goro, I really thought that it’s the last time we’ll see this deck in a competitive play. But I was wrong, and it came back strong in The Witchwood. Not even because of the new powerful cards that supplemented it (even though Vicious Scalehide is better than a lot of people are giving it credit for), but because the meta is just right. There aren’t many ‘all in’ face decks that want to kill you as quickly as possible, and there are quite a lot of slow decks you can prey on. Because that’s what Quest Rogue does – it loses to Aggro and preys on slow builds.

That was the reason why it was nerfed in the first place. Even though statistically it wasn’t the best build on the ladder, it was absolutely frustrating to play against with a slower deck. It also dominated the tournament meta, which is notably slower. That part didn’t change – it was one of the more popular choices in the Europe HCT Summer Playoffs, being brought almost as often as Even Paladin or Spiteful Druid. After the card was nerfed (it used to require only 4 minions with the same name to be played, before it got changed to 5), many people tried to bring it back to life, but without much of a success… until now.

So, does it deserve another nerf? If you like the deck, then you will probably say no. And if we look at the statistics, once again, it’s a definite no. But statistics aren’t everything. It’s a game. First and foremost, it’s supposed to be fun – if a certain deck is just awful to play against, it should get addressed. When playing a hyper Aggro, you can just run over Quest Rogue. Sure, it’s a free win, but the game isn’t really fun or exciting. Then, if you play a slow build that can’t put pressure, you should think about immediately conceding instead of wasting your own time for something as low as 15-20% chance to win. I think it’s fine when decks have polarizing matchups, but not to such extent.

I’m also not sure about the deck. On the one hand, I enjoy playing it. On the other hand, facing it as let’s say Control Priest is just a nightmare. One thing is sure, though – if they nerf it this time around, they will most likely want to kill it off for good. Adding another minion to the requirement, or maybe nerfing the global buff from 5/5 to 4/4 might do the trick here. The first one will make the Quest even harder to complete, and give even the slow decks enough time to kill the Rogue. And the second one would make the deck more manageable to deal with after it finishes the quest. Flood of 4/4’s is much easier to handle than flood of 5/5’s, and some builds could really outcontrol it in the long run.