Blackhorn
Only deletes cards in deck (no longer from hand)
Soul Barrage
Down to 4 mana and 5 damage (still targets minions and player)
Spiritsinger Umbra
5 mana (up from 4)
Ysiel Windsinger
Is now Battlecry: Your spells cost 1 this turn
Warmaster Blackhorn, who has already begun making waves in the meta.
Warmaster Blackhorn offers an early taste of CATACLYSM‘s devastation, and he may have brought a little too much of it. We’ve seen some players love his power, while others have found facing him frustrating. We enjoy cards that spark strong reactions and see plenty of play, but Blackhorn has proven to be a bit too impactful. To address this, we are adjusting him to only destroy cards in decks, preserving his destructive identity while allowing for more back-and-forth gameplay.
In Wild, these changes target a handful of decks that have become too common or that create especially sharp play patterns. Updates to Discard Warlock keep the archetype intact while lowering its power and consistency. Changes to Egg Warlock slow its strongest turns, and an adjustment to the Ysiel Druid combo strategy reduces games ending in a single explosive turn.
So, that’s Blizzard admitting the change to Blackhorn wasn’t just because people didn’t like it, but because it was, in fact, too impactful and warping the meta.
Blackhorn is about where it should be now because it allows for counterplay. You can keep your cards in hand as a counter. It sucks for shuffling decks like Rogue still, but Steamcleaner already messed with that.
I understand the change to Blackhorn but I think the design is a bit wonky. If anything, they could have changed him to eliminate cards in hand instead and not deck. That way, it hits some combo decks and doesn’t affect Rogue shuffling decks, but that’s just me. Overall, that change is likely “ok” for a nerf and likely won’t see any more adjusting.
The Spiritsinger nerf slows down the combo for at least 1 turn and doesn’t completely kill the card. I am ok with this change.
Ysiel change is pretty harsh for those Druid players who were abusing it. You can’t cheat it out now with Barnes and you have to physically play it now. It also makes it so that you have to combo that turn. That might be enough to kill the deck or at least drop its winrate a ton.
Soul Barrage nerf is weird. It makes sense in the CURRENT discard warlock deck because now it can’t hit it every time with Merchant. It now competes with the weapon so you can’t Merchant the barrage if weapon is in hand. That hurts. BUT, with the new 3 cost minion coming, it doesn’t even matter…so this change makes sense for the CURRENT deck, but doesn’t matter much with the new deck that comes with the new 3 cost minion. The change to Soul Barrage should have just been it hits minions only. They could have even upped the damage on it to 8.
There are more changes that I’d like to have seen, but I guess we’re stuck with these for now.
Its funny they let 45 different OTK/combo decks exist in various forms for years and nerfing them only days before new set or rotation because…therea another one about to take over.
But disruption? Nooo, cant have that.
By the time you get 7 mana rogue has already drawn their deck. Nice 7 mana 6/6.
It wasn’t just a disruption card. It wasn’t just a card that killed many OTK/Combo decks.
I’m sorry you’re unable to see why.
I’ve discussed it in great lengths in other threads as to why the card in its released form was bad for all of Hearthstone, even if you hate OTK decks like I do.
Blizzard (and the data) agreed that the card was not good for the game and desperately needed nerfing.
If you think Blackhorn was perfectly ok the way it was, you are simply wrong. Not subjectively wrong, but objectively wrong. The data proved it needed to be changed.
It might come to that with the new 3 cost minion. They will get lots of copies. They can ditch the weapon entirely, run merchant and Soul Barrage is the only high cost card.
Soul Barrage, get 2 copies, discard minion, get another copy that costs 3. Essentially, they will be able to trigger Soul Barrage 12 times. And that’s not counting the other minion getting a temporary copy.
So they nerf BH to only delete cards in the decks. It makes sense, but i prefer to see it as chose one: delete cards in both decks (or both hands). It makes player agency more interactive to make a choice, when and which to do so. (While we already had steam cleaner as counter to shuffled cards).
Not saying it was. Its just synptomatic for blizzard. Disruption is always too expensive, too specific, class restricted or too inefficient. A 7 mana card SHOULD be powerful. Not saying it was ok the way it was but HS is so far steered to draw/tutor lots and then 7 mana delete some cards? So what.
Because this wasn’t just a disruption card. You keep saying it’s disruption, but it was far more than that.
Disruption is usually aimed at doing 1 thing specifically. Removal, bouncing effect, minions cost more, spells cost more, etc. and these effects usually target 1 minion or last for 1 turn. And there was counterplay to those cards.
This was a card that outright had no way to play around it. If your deck had cards that cost 0-2, you lose them. It prevented and limited deck building. Imagine if Dirty Rat was pick a card from your opponent’s hand (not discover, but reveal the entire hand) and allowed you to select the exact minion and then discard it. Not summon it, just straight up erase it from the game. That’s essentially how powerful of an effect BH was. If Dirty Rat did that, then people wouldn’t be able to run ANY high cost minion because EVERYONE would run Dirty Rat. High cost minions would just disappear from play.
That’s what Blackhorn was doing to many cards.
It’s not Disruption. Disruption is slowing your play down. Disruption is taking away 1 of your combo pieces. This wasn’t Deck Disruption. This wasn’t Hand Disruption. This was Deck and Hand Deletion. And that deletion was so good that it prevented several decks from existing outright.
Now you guys broke the Dr. Boom adventure with the Umbra nerf… i was Playing the adventure to collect all the card backs. And now finishing the last puzzle (6/6) against Dr.Boom it’s not possible. Please fix it.
I think the Umbra change does much more than just slowing the deck by a turn. It blocks the turn 4 Sacrificial Summoner play automatically pulling Umbra for your zero-mana egg killing spell. Now you have to draw Umbra and play it.
Ah yes. good catch. For some reason I was thinking the reverse.
I’d rather this be the change than the way she works. I use her in my meme deck where I can make my deck size 4000+ and I need her to trigger on summon lol
Warlock in wild has a multitude of spells targeting minions. It would be redundant to add another spell that does 5 random damage to minions only. Soul Barrage was built to go face whether you choose to accept that fact or not.
The biggest issue was that 6 damage was too strong against other aggro based decks, and at 5 mana it had strong synergy with expired merchant and recently the new weapon.
Now at 5 damage Soul Barrage has trouble clearing early boards and gives other aggro decks a fighting chance. It also makes Coyote tougher to get down and can force expired merchant into a pickle depending on if there are other 4 mana cards in hand.
Taking away even the smallest amount of damage from 6 to 5 gives people the ability to withstand one more turn to find a taunt, armor or healing that is needed to survive.
I’m not sure what you mean by, “discard wasn’t targeted”. Discard playstyle has had the ability to discard your highest cost card since it’s existence. Sure the new weapon made it stronger but it’s nothing new. The only difference is you aren’t getting fisted multiple times.
If the win rate and the playrate do not go down, this conversation should be remembered.
If it did not win, it would not be overplayed like it currently is.
Same logic i have been given, more times than i can count.
