Balance patch was just announced! It releases next Tuedsay (April 26) and contain following changes:
Standard:
- Raid the Docks – Final step will require 3 Pirates (up from 2).
- Pufferfist – Now has 3 health (down from 4).
- Switcheroo – Now only swaps Health (no longer swaps Attack too).
- Miracle Growth – Now costs 8 mana (up from 7).
- Kazakusan – Text changed to “Battlecry: If you’ve played 4 other Dragons this game, craft a custom deck of Treasures.”
Wild:
- Kael'thas Sunstrider – Every third spell cast each turn will cost (1) mana (up from 0).
- Switcheroo – Banned in Wild.
They’re also looking closely as Demon Hunter and if it keeps performing too well after the patch they will also nerf it.
You can read the entire Tweet chain with explanations of each nerf here:
Hey everyone, have an update for y’all regarding balance changes. 4/26 (This upcoming Tuesday) changes to both standard and wild will go live. 1/9
— Gallon (@GallonHS) April 22, 2022
1) Raid the docks don’t change nothing is still infinite value in an aggro deck, is the reward that must be lowered;
2) Pufferfist, i a have a lot of this guys :D, so more dust;
3) Switcheroo, another bad design card, they banned for wild because of inner fire and others, honestly I would have put that work only with cards with stats similar, max +4 of difference;
4) Miracle growth is like the 4 mana spell of warlock plus 3 card draw, if you simply remove taunt from the equation would be better;
5) Kazakusan, good rework to kill the card in druid, but i think that other deck can take advantage of the new design;
6) Kael’thas is basically the demonstration of how retarded they are : there are plenty of card that can be reverted the nerf, mogu from 9 to 7, fire totem to 3 life, first day of school back to zero but no they choose a legendary nerfed twice “what can ever go wrong?” I have no words….
The Raid the Docks change will 100% make a difference. Pirate Warrior is already pretty bad at decent ranks because its play patterns are predictable and often easily exploited.
It is already dicey getting the Quest Reward down safely in the vast majority of matchups. And now you have to potentially wait a whole extra turn? In my opinion this is enough to kill pirate warrior outright in standard (although it will still see play in lower ranks).
You are right that it’s still infinite value against control decks, but control decks make up a tiny portion of the ladder. If pirate warrior gets worse in all its other matchups, people just won’t play it nearly as much. So then even if it beats control, it doesn’t matter. Because basically nobody is playing it.
Yes, once you get to diamond, pirate warrior really dies vs Druid/DH.
Unfortunately- I don’t have all the cards for those decks and neither plays a quest line which I feel like every week I get a complete 3 QLs.
I thought I was bored of Libram Paly. QL Warrior is a sleeping pill.
You are right nobody is playing right now because of druid, but with kazakusan out of my mind in druid, control should come out because control war can easily beat aggro DH (and other aggro deck) but who is thw worst match up? Yes, pirate warrior. We will see how the story will evolve.
Yahar!!! Who would have thought that Pirate Warrior is going to save the Meta?
Good nerfs, but honestly seem a bit late. Standard is barely playable now due to Pirates/Guff mana 5 kekw
I disagree, The four last expansions have this in common: the balance patch day is always the second Tuesday after the expansion went out, and they always announce it a few days before. 10 days to decide on balance changes is hard.
I got you, druid player.
dude, noone would nerf good decks after a week of new expansion AND rotation. In this time a lot of decks are formed and its obvious that one deck will dominate for some time than someone else will find out even better one etc (mech mage, ramp druid, aggro dh just for example) and it is impossible (and very stupid) if nerfs would be done after such short amount of time. Never understand people like you which would like to nerf tier 1 decks day after they pop out.
thx for explanation dood, never told about day 1 nerf. Can’t you all just read correctly?
All site is full of articles about druid/pirate dominance etc and you keep saying it’s ok. It’s just my opinion that druid was insta-broken.
Anyway patch came out – have fun.
Unplayable? Er. I hit the Play button, enter queue, and moments later, I *think* I am playing HS.
Oh wait, you are a game design expert. Got you.
*Guff mana 5 reporting in 😛
I know nothing about game design. Hope you get your legend some day.
You know nothing about games, period.
haha. rank 5 bronze saying.
What about Kael’thas Sunstrider? I mean it is an uncraftable card, how will be the “full-dust disenchant” thing aply to it?
It won’t. It didn’t cost you any dust, you didn’t craft it to slot it into your deck, thus, you won’t get dust.
I’m not completely sold out with Kazakusan, this is more a rework than a nerf, now opens the door to Control Paladin with Amber Watcher and Explorer (buffed to 3/3) and the Amalgam is a good consideration in deck building too! Dragon Priest is also obvious choice and Control Warrior too. New wording only hits Druid because of current pool of dragons but there are expansions and minisets to come this year..
Warrior pirates still too strong, just nerf Mr Smite that is completely unbalanced and win games unwinable without it
Switcheroo Priest : completely dead overnight
And no one shed a tear, garbage to play against.
Priest gets a nerf every time and they have barely been playable for 3 years. You could in-nerf every priest card for the past 4 years and the class would still be garbage.
As always Overnerfed due to squeekys… they gutted it when all they had to do was raise it one mana or maybe it to make it on par with the win speed (and not the win rate) of any ANY of the rest of the decks due to power creep. But hey glad your but hurt and the card got ruined. Been playing since launch and watched the squeekys shaft card after card that could be fixed by a tune or a mana change… how many cards once Switcharoo gets banned will it make. I am not paying for you to make cards then ban them after we invest time and thought in the meta… Add to it a host of errors the game seems to have while they make things like mercenaries for us to spend the money on, and how many new AAA titles can I buy with what I spend every 3 months. Fuck it done, Ill tinker with old decks play friends, and do dailies. NOT another red cent from me after years of bs like Ginnel’s getting cards nerfed or banned in the meta I play.
Not a dry eye in the house.
Druid barely hitted, you can switch to Nagas instead of dragons, but the whole ramp including Guff untouched.. Kaza still playable in Warrior or Priest but worse now so I’m not sure if dust him!?
Druid nerfs should make the class weaker across all stages of the game. Miracle Growth costing 1 more means that aggro decks have an extra turn to hit face before druid drops a huge taunt, while Kazakusan being cut from all competitive decklists means that control decks can finally beat druid in the late game. You may as well dust Kazakusan when the nerfs hit because you’ll get full dust refund and can craft him again with said dust whenever you want.
Kazakusan nerf is a big deal for Druid. They don’t run any other Dragons than Onyxia so they would need to slot at least three more (and realistically four to play around stuff like Mutanus hitting one of them). And you often need Kazakusan in Control matchups because they might be able to answer your Giants/Ivus/Onyxia and then you’re left with nothing. So you either cut Kazakusan and make your Control matchups much worse or add a few Dragons and make all of the matchups slightly worse.
Miracle Growth to 8 is actually also quite a big deal, it often delays it by 1 turn or means that you can’t play Growth + Earthen Scales on the same turn. People usually underestimate the impact of 1 mana nerfs.
But yes, Kazakusan should still be playable. It’s possibly even a buff in Dragon decks that run a couple of non-Dragon minions. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t dust it, since you can always re-craft it later 🙂
Was excited with Kaz look something new and to tinker with and not really on all of the net decks. But hey lets gut that too while were putting a bandaid on all the issues. What kept MTG viable was they had instants/counters.. since HS is also mobile and they wanted a quick game.. its starting to wear a bit thin.
Really nice nerfs. Looking forward to disenchanting Raid the Docks and Kazakusan for some fatty dust.
Thank god they just banned switcheroo in wild entirely, it’s not a fun deck to play against
what is that kills you by 6? inane comment that only cares about your own but hurt.
Ah, so you were the kind of person to play switcheroo priest?
Some nice hefty, and expected nerfs.