Let’s share our hot takes. The field clearly needs some balance changes after mini-set so here are my takes:
*Nerfs:
Shattered Reflections: Can’t target Titans.
Boogie Down: loses Holy tag.
Cultivation: 10 mana
Pop’Gar the Putrid: 5 mana
Thaddius: discounts 5 mana, no less than 1.
Velarok: Transforms when played 3 cards from other classes this game.
*Buffs
Fel Fissure: 3 mana.
Fan the Hammer: 3 mana.
Gunslinger Kurtus: Fires 8 shots.
Climactic Necrotic Explosion: 8 mana.
Tae’Thelan Bloodwatcher: Cards that didn’t start in your deck cost (3) less.
Benevolent Banker now discovers a minion.
The Azerite Murloc: Transforms friendly minions (board only) into ones that cost 3 more and enemy ones into ones that cost 3 less.
The Azerite Snake: Steals 8 health.
I think these changes would end most or all the toxic problems and significantly open up new opportunities for decks that people have been craving for for a while. What are everyone’s thoughts on balance changes, what would you change?
Not sold on this one. Mostly dislike that leaving any minion alive for paladin ever can just get you killed.
I’d do something harsher, like adding “can’t attack heroes this turn” to Shroomscavate.
I’d rather them revert the sludge and sludge on wheels buff. 4 damage is way too high to be just passively launched.
That’s fine.
Also ok. Stops the obnoxious high roll aspect of getting hit with it multiple times before turn 4 ends.
This won’t do anything particularly useful. The card is unplayably bad prior to turn 10 anyway. The minions it summons just need to do something immediately. Give them rush.
That would be ok. I’d also be cool with making it do it’s regular effect to all minions in both decks.
Either this, or make it generates one fewer copy, e.g. it doesn’t get a copy on the board.
Oh lord please yes. And increase the cost to 4 mana. That card is insane. Draw 2 1-drops, play them, give them taunt, thin your deck, remove bad draws from later turns, and curve into Crusader Aura and Deputization Aura.
TBH I would just ban Thaddius and revert the Sludge changes. They were originally 2 mana to deal 3 damage and have gotten Chaos Creation support with the miniset.
Even this would be really weak, he’s the only Highlander payoff that can do nothing. I’d let him fire shots into the deck if he runs out of targets in the hand, or fire shots at the battlefield. Or make him actually better than Patchwerk and straight up delete minions since Reno DH has no win condition and you’re sacrificing so much from the DH class specifically.
For my own additions,
Dew Process: increase cost to 4 mana, or make it only draw for the caster. Give it the Celestial Alignment treatment. It’s never been used outside of degenerate strategies.
Earth Pendant: give armor equal to the minion’s health. Drop cost to 2 if it makes you feel better.
Cactus Construct: either increase cost to 2, or change the stats on the summon to 0/1. It’s still a token and still a nature spell.
World Pillar Fragment: limit to discovering elementals that cost 5 or less. No reason for this to be a better version of Maruut Stonebinder.
Shroomscavate: give it the Blessing of Authority flag, can’t attack heroes this turn.
This is a good change I’d agree. Going to 8 mana could be very strong though, the deck now has some tools to quickly generate and spend corpses very early.
This is a little too harsh imo and would make the excavate archetype unplayable. I think removing holy tags is a good approach, to slow down the possibility of double Grace + Shroom. The fact that paladin kills you if you leave a minion alive is kind of a design choice that is very hard to undo by now, so at least slow it down a bit.
I don’t think so really. The card would remain as is, the only thing is to stop it from becoming an early highroll leading to non-matches. The early Velarok is what keeps rogue alive in some matches like pala and treant druid but since we’d be targeting those too I think rogue would remain competitive. It’s a very light change or no change at all tho. Rogue can die again with the slightest touch.
Edit: also notice, the change to Benevolent Banker would be huge and i bet would significantly help both priest (the automaton version or the control version) and excavate rogue through stick up and the 2 mana legendary. Discovering a minion to steal from your opponent’s deck is a huge deal (think stealing Brann) and easily discovering Velarok from your deck is also great. That change would be spicy as hell.
Shattered Reflections - 7 or 8 mana
Pendant of Earth - Only gives armor equal to HALF the cost of the minion, but now costs 2 mana.
Shroomscavate - Windfury needs to be removed from it. Replace it with literally anything else.
The Garden’s Grace - Reduced to +4/+4.
Velarok - Mini rework. Original form is 3/4 with rush that gives a card from another class when it attacks. Transforms once 2 cards from other classes are played. Dragon form has same effect as before, but cost reduction is lowered to 2.
Shattered Reflections - Target Enemy minions only.
Dew Process - 3 mana (though this doesn’t fix anything)
And that’s all the nerfs you’ll get because “let’s see what these nerfs do” excuse.
No Paladin nerf because “let’s see what these nerfs do” excuse
Possible buffs, but will be to the dumbest cards that see no play and are buffed in a way that doesn’t help the problem with said card in the first place.
Examples:
Elise is now 7 mana!
The Stars Align now transforms to minions that cost (4) more!
Much rather have that than “can’t target Titans” because the can’t target titans hurts Priest for the sake of Druid. Druid isn’t using it to target enemy minions for the most part, they are abusing their own titan and refreshing mana for infinite cycles. Priest is just doing it to get legit copies they have to pay for in full.
Velarok is far from the problem in Rogue. They need to just HOF the illusionist now. Card is broken in wild and broken in standard. It better be removed in rotation or they are going end up with a BIG problem.
Shattered reflections: Never made any sense why the card allows friendly targeting. Should have always been enemy. Will they change it? Probably not and if they do it will be something like…it’s 6 mana now. Fixed!
They won’t touch dew process even though it should have never been created. They rotated that stuff years ago because they themselves said it was a bad play pattern to burn opponents decks away.
Shroomscavate: 100% agree it needs the “no face” when cast turn treatment.
Doubtful they touch the pendant as the Naga rotates soon.
I don’t think they will nerf it but it makes 0 sense why Badlands Reno is 8 mana Hero. It should not be 8 mana. I’m fine with the effect. But not at 8 mana. See: GulDan Death Knight Hero, or Mage Reno Hero for comparison
As this thread’s post count approaches infinity, the number of Standard cards currently seeing play that will be spared from nerf wishlists will approach zero.
I’m starting to board the “Reno is the problem” Train
At first it appears fine, sorta. But then when you factor in that Reno is basically a Control tool that also doubles as a Combo tool, it’s not ok. It gives Control tools to deck archetypes that shouldn’t have them. This is the exact reason Kazakustan was nerfed - Druid was using it to control the board by wiping boards over and over and just being unstoppable.
You can’t give some classes a control tool like Reno. It’s too strong.
This would be like giving Priest draw equivalent to DH. It wouldn’t be fair because draw is a Priest weakness and if it had DH style draw it would be utterly broken.
I think the Azerite Murloc is fine as is. Its pretty neat in an excavate / evolve shaman as a sort of quasi-competitive casinorogue. Turning it into a 4 mana slightly better primordial wave is pretty weak. I think they would have to completely redesign it to change it from the current gimmick card status and I doubt they care to do that. Something that would make sense as far as powerlevel would be to ‘transform 2 cards in your opponents hand into cards that cost (3) less’ and make it a disruption tool, but people will absolutely hate that.
it does have a Control deck. What Druid shouldn’t have access to is best board wipes in the game. In has that in Reno and had that in Kazakusan. Druid has control style decks that don’t focus on board wipes but instead on control board with smaller board control spells and combos (like Topior which is ABSOLUTELY a control card and is insanely good)
Druid “weakness” used to be no board wipes. That’s why they have Ramp. They control the board by putting up bigger minions faster and using smaller spells to control board presence like Swipe or Wrath. Once they get board wipes, especially if they are the best board wipes in the game, it’s no longer fair because Ramp no longer has a downside.
You give a class Ramp and Board Wipes you end up with what we have now and what we had pre-nerf Kazakusan.
I don’t disagree with this from a history perspective but it’s not as if every other class has been playing by these rules over the years. I mean, at first the only class that had a relatively guaranteed “kill everything” was Warlock in Twisting Nether, and maybe you’d count Warrior and Paladin with the Brawl into Shield Slam and Equality into Consecrate combos. Now Priest has Whirlpool and I’m probably missing things that other classes have. If crossing these kinds of lines is some sacred taboo, then it has totally lost the feeling of being a sacred taboo to me.
My concern here is that applying design space “weaknesses” too hard on some classes and just ignoring that policy on other classes is just going to result in an unfairly weak class. You know, the Mallenroh argument, but Druid instead of Mage and I’m not actually angry about anything.