We are now two days into the balance patch that nerfed Paladin and Lady S'theno, and it looks like Blizzard was able to hit most of their goals for the patch. The dominance of Pure Paladin has been ended with nerfs to The Purator, Feast and Famine, and Disco Maul. Spell Demon Hunter has been weakened again, this time with a direct nerf to Lady S'theno. The pre-emptive Hunter nerf to Hope of Quel'Thalas was definitely not too much; it may have actually been too little. The buffs… Well, we’ll talk about the buffs a little later in this article.
Let’s take a look at the main effects of the balance patch!
Pure Paladin After the Nerfs
Pure Paladin was hit hard with a whopping three cards getting nerfed. However, Paladin is not easy to take out. It does not have many flashy cards that end the game on the spot, but it has a wide arsenal of powerful tools. You can weaken multiple of them, and still end up with limited overall results.
Not all Pure Paladin decks have had the same results after the patch. In particular, the handbuff variant with Grimestreet Outfitter has taken a bigger hit than the other variants. It cannot accommodate a three-mana Disco Maul as easily as the more aggressive version, and it struggles with Paladin’s new mana curve.
On the other hand, the more aggressive Pure Paladin decks can still perform well. In particular, Order in the Court is back in style now that Disco Maul is no longer available for two mana. There are no new lists, but this old list has risen to the top of the class:
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Is Spell Demon Hunter Dead Again?
Blizzard already killed Spell Demon Hunter once during Festival of Legends with the Sinful Brand nerf. Then, they resurrected the deck with Through Fel and Flames in the mini-set. Now, it is time for the deck to die again as Lady S'theno went down to just one Attack.
The old Abusive Sergeant list is completely dead. However, there is a new version that removes Abusive Sergeant and adds Crazed Alchemist into the deck to replace it. With Crazed Alchemist, Lady S'theno can still reach four Attack on the combo turn, but at the cost of one more mana.
In practice, that one more mana looks like a fairly big deal. While the deck may survive in a specific meta, it is not looking good anymore.
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The New Tier One – Previously Known as Tier Two
It is a bit too early to give specific rankings for decks, but overall we are seeing a much more closely contested meta with a number of decks fighting for the number one spot. While none of these are brand new, they now have a new opportunity to free themselves from Pure Paladin’s shadow.
Enrage Warrior is one of the winners of the patch. Pure Paladin was a difficult matchup for the deck, and it has now become much more tolerable. Many players voiced concerns that Enrage Warrior could become too good after a Paladin nerf, but so far it looks like an even race between the top contenders.
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In particular, this newer archetype is keeping Enrage Warrior in check. Thaddius Druid lives up to the legacy of Ramp Druid decks in that it is a polarizing opponent. Against the likes of Hound Hunter and Enrage Warrior, it can be a devastating foe to meet, but against faster decks like Totem Shaman and Evolve Shaman, it usually just perishes without much ado. It is still bad against Pure Paladin too, but Pure Paladin numbers being lower now has opened more space for Druid in the early post-patch meta.
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-111
- Player:
- 10,620
Everyone expected Hound Hunter to be a strong deck after the patch, and it is a strong deck indeed. The Hope of Quel'Thalas nerf looks justified based on the ongoing strong results of Hunter.
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-111
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- 13,680
The new best Demon Hunter archetype is Relic Demon Hunter. Especially builds with Enchanter in them have risen in prominence recently.
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Interesting things are happening with Shaman. The early beneficiary of the balance patch was Totem Shaman which rapidly improved in performance against any attempts to play unrefined decks on the ladder. Totem Shaman remains a fine deck, but it is starting to bend to an even more powerful Shaman force…
- Format: wolf
- Season: season-111
- Player:
- 9,880
Evolve Shaman is back once again! The deck is hard-countered by Pure Paladin, even in its weakened state, but as Paladin numbers are down on the ladder, Evolve Shaman is in an excellent position to strike.
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What About the Buffs?
While the nerfs are all fine and good, the balance patch took a curious approach to buffs. The only cards that were buffed were some of the weaker cards from the Audiopocalypse mini-set. The mini-set as such was already a strong one, but all of its most powerful cards supported archetypes that were doing well before the mini-set. There could be room in the meta for some new decks – some kind of Undead Aggro Druid comes to mind – but there are no cards in the mini-set that can help any such archetypes.
Consequently, the buffs to Fiddlefire Imp, Remixed Dispense-o-bot, and Rhythmdancer Risa have been largely inconsequential.
I tried to play the buffed cards on the first day of the patch myself, and it felt quite hopeless.
Fiddlefire Imp does not benefit from having three Health. If anything, it would have benefited from a decreased mana cost, as you rarely have enough mana to play the spells you get from it immediately. It does give things like Hellfire on a fairly regular basis, but ironically it still dies to Hellfire if you are able to play it on the same turn. Its best chance to see play would be in a more control-oriented Warlock deck, which further highlights how useless the Health buff was. It is the spells that matter, not the stats.
Remixed Dispense-o-bot is likewise still a slow card. It is unable to contribute to Mech Mage, as Mech Mage is all about Mecha-Shark and a three-mana Mech is an awkward companion to the Shark. Getting random Mechs to your hand also does not work well in Mech Mage, as you cannot easily play the Dispense-o-bot on three and wait longer to use your Seafloor Gateway. The card is better in a control deck, but control decks have better tools available.
The purpose and function of Rhythmdancer Risa continues to elude me. It can sort of help you clear a board and then what? There has been some experimentation with the card in Miracle Rogue and Weapon Rogue, but nothing that has convinced me yet. When you get it on turn four and start clearing the board with it, it seems like it should work. But then you don’t find it in time in most of the games and it does nothing when there is already a Lightray on the board.
It does not appear that the buffs will have an effect on the meta.
Good Times Ahead?
There are no brand-new decks or archetypes that would have entered the meta immediately after the balance patch. However, some of the decks that had been built after the mini-set, like Thaddius Druid and Evolve Shaman, now have more room to breathe as they were completely devastated by Pure Paladin before the patch. This, in turn, should result in some more refinement rounds and opportunities to come up with new decks. The meta is more diverse at the very top than it has been in a long time, and from that perspective, it looks like a good time to play some Hearthstone!
Old Guardian
Ville "Old Guardian" Kilkku is a writer and video creator focused on analytic, educational Hearthstone, and building innovative Standard format decks. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OldGuardian Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/old_guardian
