Apotheosis now +1/+2.
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 now costs 2 mana
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 now costs 2 mana
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.
Oof.
5 Likes
So no surprise this time, we all saw this coming a mile away after what they said last week.
Is priest dead? These are two massive nerfs.
6 Likes
As expected I guess! Gibberling is dead I guess, was mostly used for early games highroll anyway!
Not sure how the priest changes will affect them, in they succeed in lowering the priests burst healing I am happy, as that was getting a bit ridiculous!
apotheosis is still playable…they killed the samuro combo
If not dead, it’ll definitely be on life support.
Beyind dropping a tier or two, expect the popularity of the deck to plummet massively.
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When a card goes up 1 mana and people declare the entire class dead. You guys need better data.
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You’d be shocked at how often a 1 mana nerf can remove something from competitive viability, at least knocking it down a single tier.
These nerfs put together will definitely hurt pretty bad for Priest.
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This patch does put a smile on my face
All seems right to me. Wasnt specting nerfs, but this ones are good. Specialy the druid one, those things could get out of control super easy
The Priest consists mainly of low attack minions, so the 1 point of attack off is pretty brutal. That probably would’ve been plenty. The health side of the buff getting hit too is really bad.
7 Likes
or a better way to explain it: the mana cost doubled
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Getting it removed from Wandmaker’s pool of spells is also pretty brutal for the total amount of Renews being played.
5 Likes
For a token deck, delaying their full board for an entire turn is gigantic.
It gives the opponent an entire extra turn to prepare and deal with it.
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Good to see these changes at least. It denies priest it’s very early game win condition and so to with gibberling druid (to an extent).
Priest is an attrition deck it doesn’t have one of those things.
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It really does. Sethekk veilweaver + Nazmani on board both at same time would often be game over for the other player thanks to that one 0 cost card, renew.
It was necessary for the devs to break that chain of infinite spell discovery priest would often get.
1 Like
Good Priest decks don’t run Nazmani. The nerfs certainly weren’t aimed at Miracle Priest. I don’t think you understand what “often” means.
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