Out of nowhere, Blizzard has announced a nerf patch. And unlike the previous ones, which were scheduled ahead, this one will come out TODAY (December 19th, 2018). Five cards in total are going to be nerfed, 2 of which are Basic/Classic Druid Ramp cards. Those are some big changes that are definitely going to shake up the meta.
- Wild Growth – Will now cost 3 mana, up from 2.
- Nourish – Will now cost 6 mana, up from 5.
- Level Up! – Will now cost 6 mana, up from 5.
- Saronite Chain Gang – Will now read “Summon another Saronite Chain Gang” instead of “Summon a copy of this minion”.
- Leeching Poison – Will now cost 1 mana, down from 2, but apply the effect for only a single turn.
Developer’s Note: This balance update is focused on improving the long-term health of both Standard and Wild. We’ve opted to make these changes earlier in the expansion cycle than we normally consider; we’d like to hear your feedback on the timing of this update, in addition to what you think of all the individual card changes.
Wild Growth – Will cost 3 mana. (Up from 2)
Nourish – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)
Wild Growth and Nourish have been present in every mid-range, combo, and control Druid deck since their introduction in the Basic and Classic set. When cards from the Basic and Classic set are too powerful, they can have negative long-term effects on the game. Continuously playing against these cards can start to feel repetitive, and they can feel so mandatory that they stifle creative deckbuilding decisions. By increasing the mana cost of both cards by one, we expect them to be considerations in late-game control Druid decks, but more difficult to fit in strategies that don’t directly take advantage of ramping mana.
Level Up! – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)
Odd Paladin has consistently been one of the most powerful and most played decks since its introduction in The Witchwood. By removing Level Up from Odd Paladin, we still expect it to be a competitive board control deck, just with more consistent damage output that should be easier to play around.
Saronite Chain Gang – Now reads: Taunt. Battlecry: Summon another Saronite Chain Gang.
Shudderwock brings an interesting combo to the table, but playing Shudderwock multiple times in a single game can be frustrating. Changing Saronite Chain Gang makes playing multiple Shudderwocks in a game much more difficult. Shudderwock should now exist as a powerful one-turn effect rather than constantly copying itself with Saronite Chain Gang’s Battlecry.
Leeching Poison – Will cost 1 mana. (Down from 2). Now reads: Give your weapon Lifesteal this turn.
We love the fantasy of building a powerful weapon over the course of a game with Kingsbane, but granting it a permanent Lifesteal effect with Leeching Poison resulted in an endgame with few weaknesses, as well as conflicting with our philosophy that Rogues should not have persistent self-healing effects. Making the Lifesteal effect only active for one turn should address some of the power level issues with Kingsbane Rogue’s late game.
Once these card changes are live, players will be able to disenchant the changed non-Basic cards for their full Arcane Dust value for two weeks.
What I don’t understand: why does wild growth give you a draw card spell at 10 mana when none of the other mana ramps do? It always bothered me, but with the nerf I think they addressed the wrong thing. Should have kept it at 2 mana with no draw. It becomes a dead card after 10 mana, which dissuades people from using it instead of synergizing the draw spell. Now we ramp three into five mana or three to draw a card? Useless.
OTK C’thun decks incoming
If people will play mage, then OTK C’thun decks will be tier1
I want the dust refund on Kingsbane too
So Rastakhan had close to nothing impact on the meta, so hey lets bring out some nerfs to shake up the meta by force. I do understand the nerfs except for wild growth. Hunter is the clear winner here. And waiting on players crafting cards using the hunter dk hero power is so boring 🙁
And by ‘shaking up the meta’ barely anything new will emerge, while old unremoved stuff that survived will continue to dominate.
Wait im so dumb, I disenchanted all my extra copies yesterday or 2 days ago. I thought nerfs usually get announced way sooner?
These all hurt one deck each EXCEPT the druid nerfs. Those will hurt the most for the respective players as those cards are in most druid decks and are from the Classic/Evergreen set.
These are honestly devastating. The biggest one I think is saronite. It ruins all of the decks it goes in and not just shudderwock. zoo can’t hand buff, pally cant valnyr buff, it honestly has just become a deck filler taunt minion now.
But don’t you think that 4/6 + taunt (ok 2/3 x2 which is not quite the same but still) for 4 isn’t fair enough?
I think it’ll still be played – not to the same OTT level, but it will.
Needed to be nerfed, such a tempo changer.
Yeah I’m not saying it wasn’t needed! I am saying that it affects more than just shudderwock.
The card has always been overpowered, even at base stats. It will continue to be playable.
Whoa! Unexpected but probably a good idea.
Hunter will now undoubtedly be top of the meta, as none of its cards were nerfed and its biggest counter (Odd Paladin) was. Honestly it might even be bad enough that Blizzard won’t wait until rotation and issue another nerf. Watch out for Priest, too. Both the Cloning Gallery/Spellstone version and the APM version hated Odd Paladin and Kingsbane Rogue.
The nerfs weird out Druid’s curve more than it hampers their overall strategy. Wild growth now curves awkwardly into Ferocious Howl and Branching Paths. Nourish curves more awkwardly into Spreading Plague. I think he’ll still be viable, but much more vulnerable to midrange, which is good since he basically iced them out of the meta.
Odd Pally might still be playable, but it’s definitely gonna rely more on pulling Sunkeeper Tarim from Stonehill Defender. We’ll probably see more Odd Rogue as the aggro deck of choice. I don’t think Aggro Mage or Aggro Shaman have the juice to become major players, even with their unwinnable Druid matchup getting nerfed. Zoolock likes less competition, too, but assuming that Saronite’s new battlecry ignores the Keleseth/Soul Infusion buffs, that’s actually really bad!
Leeching Poison (read: Kingsbane) is definitely a proactive nerf – that is, they knew that if Odd Paladin was weakened, Kingsbane would be too powerful. Without the healing I don’t think this deck works anymore against anything but the greediest control lists. Hate to say it but I think this is the only nerf that will kill off its respective deck (err, besides Saronite killing infinite Shudderwock of course)
infinite shudderwock will still technically be a thing in wild with doppelgangster.
Yeah but Blizzard doesn’t really care about Wild
These nerfs are preparing for wild meta after rotation… of course they care about wild.
Rotations doesn’t affect Wild meta because they can use Standart cards, and Odd Paladin in Wild is still strong with the 5 mana 2-5 +2/+2 on your SIlver Hand Recruits, and KingsBane is not that strong there.
@Scarecrow72 I don’t think you understand. When these nerfs happened last year, Raza, Patches, and others were nerfed in preparation for their rotation. They did not want their power level set in stone in the wild meta.
These nerfs are exactly what those were doing before, except that they happened ridiculously sooner than anyone could have predicted.
And the fact you think Kingsbane “isn’t that strong” in wild ENSURES me that you do not know what you are talking about.
To be honest, I usually destroy every hunter with my odd mage and big mage so I belive u can outplay hunter with some other control decks too.. This nerf actually bring control decks back to life, since shaman and kingsbane was impossible to beat with control…
This is the perfect time to play Malygos Rogue Combo deck
Very happy, detest kingsbane and shudderwock particularly so yay!!
It seems that someone is shipping the Hunter deck to top tier…..it’s been consistently getting stronger and now it seems like due to these nerfs it may be the deck everyone runs to…. this stinks.
odd paladin was over 40% of the meta… It needed a Nerf.
Good – as much as I hate those 4 decks, I think the nerfs are quite balanced… you should still be able to play them ok-ish (apart maybe from odd pally).
Remember Corridor Creeper? Everyone said it would be totally unplayable after the nerf…
But overall these nerfs should have more impact on the meta than the last 2 expansions combined! (Which is good)
When I read through these nerfs i was a bit shocked because I liked the ramp mechanic of the druid very much. I also played odd paladin once in a while, but I understand, that the nerf to level up is coming up because odd paladin was super strong for a long time.
Nevertheless I’m super glad that shuddlewock and kingsbane are getting nerfed because it was really really hard if not impossible to win against these two archetypes.
So after all: Good nerfs Blizz!
OMG, many deck will be die soon.
mostly druid deck will suffer, odd paladin will die in standard/wild, shudderwock will die in standard, kingsbane will die in standard/wild.
Is blizzard expect new meta soon?
but i lost many key cards to make fun for this game.
It won’t die in wild cuz it has quartermaster. It loses level up but you can add corridor creeper, there’s multiple odd paladin versions.
Hearthstone devs are so bad at deciding when to nerf cards now its embarrassing. I understand the changes and I agree with most of them but doing a nerf patch within a couple weeks of the new set release just screwed a lot of people. This is why the player base is declining, stuff like this leaves players a bitter taste especially those who are ftp or invest very little into the game.
I totally agree with your point!
As a professor that enriched many people’s childhoods in the early 2000’s said, “There is a time and place for everything. But not now.”
It’s about damn time!! Really happy with these nerfs. It would be better if they also decided to kill off Crystal core
I am okay with most of the nerfs. It will be nice to have the standard meta change. The meta has shifted very little since Witchwood. Nearly identical druid, odd paladin and shudderwock decks for 8+ months is boring. Of course we now have almost four months of recruit hunter controlling the top of the meta until it is killed by rotation. Still there will have to be something else to fill the void.
The only nerf I am not happy with is to leeching poison. I know it was done mainly for wild, but as someone who has been playing around with Kingsbane decks since K&C this is a bit of a kick in the nuts. The deck was finally becoming competitive with Raiding Party, but this will really hamper it.
I think the aggro version of the deck will still be a thing and after having tested them both i think it is mutch more fun.
The only one I don’t like is Wild Growth. The others make a lot of sense but Wild Growth to me is central to its ramp identity. Oh, well. Blizzard giveth and Blizzard taketh away ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Completly agree both cards were core of ramp mechanism yet they were not the problem of the druid in the current metà. The problem is the incredible amount of strong late game control cards the druid has and only the exsistence of those made ramp cards worth to play; druid had other build options like token or spiteful when given good early card… Despite this i would have been okay with the nerf of one only of those 2 but both is way too much and will probably relegate one of my favorite classes out of the meta for a long time to came.
Wow. And to think, just a week ago I felt like an absolute Fool for putting all my dust into Elemental Mage.
Well who’s laughing now, Poggers? WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?!?!
Blizzard can suck it this is total crap basically the only two things I can afford to play are druid and pally n now you won’t be able to ladder with either even tho there are several good druid decks none are fast enough or strong enough to keep you winning consistently 50\50 or better beyond rank ten but hey let’s continue to let hunter and garbage rogue cripple the meta, I’m litterly never spending another penny on hearthstone and I will be playing a fraction of the time….smh….
Cool. See ya!
I knew this was gonna happen so I luckily decided to put a lot of my dust into good ole odd mage.
nice buff for even pala
Not so sure as even does not create as many tokens as odd pally (think about the recruit card that I can’t remember the name that went from 4 to 5 mana…less effective because there is no 2 mana cost in the odd version of pally)
I wonder if we are getting anything for Wild Growth since we are unable to disenchant it. I don’t remember the last time they nerfed a basic card.
Why should we get something if it is a free card?
Well fu*k. I literally spent 2000 dust for Undatakah Druid YESTERDAY and 800 for Odd Pally a week ago. But still, I really like the nerfs. Also, it is pretty funny that a card that
once was a total trash packfiller (speaking of you, Leeching Poison) actually recieves a nerf. And I really like the fact that they actually made a rather different card of it, adjusting both cost and effect, not just nerfing the cost like they did with e.g. Giggling Inventor or Naga Sea Witch. Nice nerfs nevertheless.
As a Druid main I’m pretty confident you’ll still be able to play Undatakah Druid. That del relies less on ramp than any other, not to mention wild growth is still Hana be played in pretty much every Druid deck. Nourish might as well. In fact. Do to the nerfs to every combo deck it is a possibility that control will be more prevalent in the meta, meaning Undatakah Druid might actually be slightly stronger.
what server are you playing on
wow, out of nowhere…..is this a bad joke? ugly…..
Omg. I was choosing what deck to craft just a week ago. Odd Pally, Kingsbane Rogue, Treant Druid were under consideration. Luckily I prefered Even Pally. Feel sorry for those who has just crafted Rogue, it was tempting
noooooooooooooooo I literally just crafted Kingsbane and I dusted so many cards I was not using for it!!!! And I won’t get the dust refund either. This is a sad, sad day. I liked ramp too. I don’t care if Druid is strong because it doesn’t feel bad to lose to a combo deck like it does to an aggro deck like odd pally. Oh man. Im sad.
Also I think level up would be more viable if they made it 7 mana instead of 6 funny as it sounds, imo Odd Paladin would still play it. But whatever, it’s a good day when odd pally is nerfed out of tier 1
I’m with you here. I really wish they’d just let me dust my kingsbane for a full refund, because the deck is officially dead and buried and will never come back.
Aww, I just crafted odd-paladin yesterday. Hopefully some variant can pull through even if it becomes tier 2.
I doubt…but even pally will be as stromg, if not more due to the meta shift
It’s really sad that Bli$$ard only nerfs stuff when their data says that people have stopped playing the game. By just browsing Reddit and listening to the streamers, a 5-year-old would have known that players would be leaving and that action was needed back then. But no, they had to wait until MTGA went into Open Beta to announce the nerf to Giggling Inventor back in Boomsday (after saying that they were not going to release a patch), and now that people are playing MTGA and Artifact instead, they decide to nerf the archetypes that had been a bad experience during the year of the Raven. And notice that I said nerf ARCHETYPES and not cards, because they sneakily nerfed key cards without addressing the REAL culprits.
When did Wild Growth and Nourish become problematic cards? The moment Ultimate Infestation was printed! And yet, Innervate, WG and Nourish have been nerfed instead! Not to mention that Spreading Plague and Branching Paths also covered the weakness of the ramp in the early game until you got to cast UI. Logic anyone? Oh yeah, UI is an epic and WG and Nourish are not, less dust for the players.
Level Up! – a perfectly fine card, strictly worse than 2-arms men from past sets, ran as a one-of in Aggro Dude Paladin before Witchwood. Then Baku comes around… well yeah, then this card becomes insane. But it’s not a problem of the card. It’s a problem of the upgraded Hero Power, which is just TOO STRONG WHEN IT IS ACTIVE FROM THE BEGINNING!! And who gets the nerf? The epic, not the legendary. Was changing Baku to create a 2/2 Silver Hand Recruit so hard?
Leeching Poison – this one is a joke. It’s obviously only good in Kingsbane. Why not nerf Kingsbane to be a 1/2 weapon instead of a 1/3 weapon? Oh yeah, because Kingsbane is legendary and Poison is a common.
Saronite Chain Gang – a perfectly fine card with lots of synergies in lots of archetypes. Stupid Shudderwock comes around and… In any case, the card could have been “nerfed” with a different wording that would still ONLY affect Shudderwock: “Battlecry: summon another Saronite Chain Gain with the same enchantments as this minion” BOOM! You still leave its synergies with Keleseth, Valanyr, Soul Infusion and literally any other handbuff, which was the reason why Saronite Chain Gang was printed in the first place. Now those strategies have to suffer because of Shudderwock, and of course SCG is a Rare, not a legendary like Shudderwock.
And yeah… where are the Hunter nerfs? Do we still believe it’s OK to summon 12/12 stats in turn 5?
All in all, despite powerful decks getting hit and that the meta is finally going to be shaken, I am very disappointed with the nerfs, purposefully avoiding nerfing the real culprits because they would give back too much dust to the playerbase.
I don’t agree with much of your comment, but the idea that Blizzard is reacting to other games when nerfing cards is utterly ridiculous. You might want to take a look at the player counts for Artifact and the stream numbers for it and MTGA. They are more in competition with each other than Hearthstone, Artifact hurt Gwent a whole lot more than it hurt Hearthstone.
Blizzard has its own problems. For example, Odd Paladin being on top of the meta for three expansions and not receiving a new card in the deck for the last two. Druid having the same core cards in decks for years. These are problems they are addressing now, so this is a step in the right direction.
No nerf to hunter ? spellstone will ruin a lot of games , the only card they also need o nerf
Spell Hunter is new to the top of the meta and won’t be around for long. The question is, can any deck rise to challenge Zul’jin now that all this competition is out of the way?
:cracks knuckles: Time for my Odd Mage to shine!
Nice nerfs, but i just craft kingsbane and now is dead, no dust refund, the same for people that invested a lot in druid, is all dead now.
Late game druid decks are still going to play wildgrowth and nurish even decks that just want to play UI will still play the ramp probably. I am not going to be surprised if they pri t good intresting cards in the future and wild growth and nurish are stoping blizzard from doing so. Its more or lesss what happened to fiery war axe it got nerfed and they printed a bunch of cool new wepons
Kingbane rogue is dead in wild now hooray
No more worst control match ups
Now when is barns getting a nerf?
MY EVEN DRUID WILL SHINE NOW
NUMETA
This reeks of ‘Nobody is playing new cards and the meta is stale, so let’s destroy an archetype.’ Similar to how Patches was needed a couple of months before rotation. Why have I had to hear ‘My Jaws that bite’ an unquantifiable amount of times before you think, maybe this isn’t fun for both players.
Nothing makes me happier than seeing Odd Paladin absolutely butchered, although maybe even paladin with rise further now..
All in all, happy with the nerfs. But maybe be a little more proactive?
Even dude paladin incoming!
Saronite Chain Gang won’t keep any buffs now… just summon a 2/3 taunt.
Nerf to Zoo Lock.
And nerf to tempo shudderwock shaman as well ! Even if the point is to have one massive board-swing turn, having two 6/6s or one 6/6 and a 2/3 (which btw dies to hagatha battlecry) definitely is weaker.
Exactly. It’s indirect nerf to any deck using keleseth-chain gang package.
Well, these are the needs everyone was expecting, more or less… Level up and Nourish were pretty big offenders and they kind of had it coming. As for wild growth, altough I hate when druids have 10 mana on turn 6, I think that the nerf to nourish was enough, and perhaps a nerf to UI would’ve been better. The nerf to leeching poison is pretty much certain to kick Kingsbane rogue out of the mega. And yeah, shudderwock got a big nerf, but with the support it got this expansion it should still be a Tier 2-ish deck.
How so ? The combo is just straight up impossible to pull out now.
Well, sht, you’re right, idk why I thought different. Thanks for pointing out.
Too late for these nerfs. Why they waiting so long?
Mostly well tought and deserved nerfs I would say. I do disagree with wild growth nerf since it’s druids core card and would probably nerf some other druid OP cards, but nourish definitely needed the nerf. I agree with other nerfs since they target decks that are either unfun to play against (shudderwock, kingsbane) or are too strong (odd paladin). I am a bit worried about warlock (especially even) and all sorts of hunters out there that might deserve some nerf as well. Also, warriors baku hero power might be quite problematic once infinite value generators (like rexxar etc.) rotate out with next expansion.
I see so much hate for Kingsbane everywhere, I don’t get it.. I didn’t see this deck on ladder very often.. unlike Hunter, which is clearly the big winner here.. with Evenlock 🙂
You’re out of your mind, at high levels ALL I saw was odd paladin and Kingsbane Rogue, both were straight up cancer decks, this is a great nerf
Is much more popular and strong in wild
Rank 1-5 I see it every other game and sit there and pray they don’t pull leech lol
How to destroy a deck in ten seconds. Rest In Peace Odd Paladin.
hah rip odd pally and kingsbane
I mean…the nerfs are nice, and necessary, but I just crafted Shudderwock Shaman so I feel pretty damn bad.
You can always disenchant recently changed cards for their full dust cost for a little while after the changes go live.
But you won’t get a refund for untouched cards like Shudderwock, Grumble etc.
Yes, but Shudderwock was not nerfed, Grumble was not nerfed etc. so even if you’ve crated a whole deck, you will only get a refund for Saronite Chain Gang (which is nothing).
Tbh I don’t think that the deck really deserved a nerf right now given that it’s not dominating the meta anyway and it’s going to rotate out in ~3.5 months.
But you don’t get dust back for the Shudderwock etc, which are not directly nerfed but become significantly worse from this
You can still use it in wild…