Whizbang’s Heroes Twist Updates

Community Discussion
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July 16 Updates

Thorim, Stormlord is no longer banned as of the launch of patch 30.0. The following Heroes have had their health adjusted:

Brann Bronzebeard 35->30
Dr. Boom 40->35
Halveria Darkraven 32->25
Guff Runetotem 25->22
Lady Liadrin 25->22
Leeroy the Reckless 40->35
The Lich King 50->47
Marin the Manager 25->22
Queen Azshara 35->30
Thorim, Stormlord 25->20

July 9 Updates (Corrected)

Yesterday, Thorim was temporarily banned until Patch 30.0. Today, the following Health updates are going out:

Halveria Darkraven: 32 → 25
Guff Runetotem: 30 → 25
Lady Liadrin: 30 → 25
Marin the Manager: 30 → 25
Queen Azshara: 38 → 35
King Krush: 30 → 28
N’zoth, the Corruptor: 28 → 25
Sargeras, the Destroyer: 40 → 50
Arch-Villain Rafaam: 45 → 50
Forest Warden Omu: 45 → 50
Patches the Pirate: 40 → 45
Sir Finley Mrrrgglton: 40 → 45
The Lich King: 45 → 50
Nozdormu: 40 → 45
Illidan Stormraige: 40 → 35

July 2 Updates

We’ve got a pretty big shakeup following the recent content update for Whizbang’s Heroes (see Patch 29.6 and 29.6.2 for more on that content update). The new season has just begun, so we’ll continue to keep an eye on how it develops, for our next round of Hero Health adjustments. Here are today’s changes:

Thorim, Stormlord: 35 → 25
N’zoth, the Corruptor: 35 → 28
Guff Runetotem: 35 → 30
Lady Liadrin: 35 → 30
Marin the Manager: 35 → 30
King Krush: 35 → 30
Halveria Darkraven: 35 → 32
Heartbreaker Hedanis: 35 → 50
C’thun: 35 → 50
Elite Tauren Champion: 35 → 50
Forest Warden Omu: 35 → 45
The Lich King: 35 → 45
Patches the Pirate: 35 → 40
Nozdormu: 35 → 40
Illidan Stormrage: 35 → 40
Sargeras, the Destroyer: 35 → 40
Dr. Boom: 35 → 40
Leeroy Jenkens: 35 → 40
Queen Azshara: 35 → 38

June 18 Updates

We’re rolling out another wave of smaller weekly Hero Health adjustments as we get most of the Heroes into a better spot.

King Krush: 50 → 55
Illidan Stormrage: 40 → 37
Nozdormu: 32 → 30
Forest Warden Omu: 30 → 28
The Lich King: 25 → 23
Zul’jin: 30 → 28
Al’Akir the Windlord: 25 → 24

Edit: As a reminder, non-Health updates like decks, Hero Powers, and Passives will be going into our normal balance windows. The first of which is scheduled to be Patch 29.6.2.

June 11 Updates

We’re rolling out further Hero Health adjustments to help encourage meta diversity. Now that things have started to settle, we’re aiming to have Tuesday afternoon be our time for these planned weekly updates going forward (while maintaining flexibility where needed).

The Lich King 27 → 25
Al’Akir the Windlord: 27 → 25
Kael’thas Sunstrider: 35 → 30
Xyrella: 33 → 32
Arfus: 20 → 18
Dr. Boom: 50 → 60
Guff Runetotem: 40 → 50
King Krush: 45 → 50
N’Zoth, the Corruptor: 40 → 45

June 7 Updates

Another Hero Health adjustment is rolling out now.

Hero Health Updates
Arfus: 25 → 20
Al’Akir the Windlord: 30 → 27
The Lich King: 30 → 27
Nozdormu: 35 → 32
C’Thun: 45 → 80
King Krush: 40 → 45
Arch-Villain Rafaam: 40 → 45
Xyrella: 30 → 33
Brann Bronzebeard: 35 → 38

June 3 Updates

Hacked Decks Update
Over the weekend, some players used unauthorized software to run illegal decks in Twist, resulting in instant win combos. We have rolled out a hotfix patch to stop these cheats. After this update, we’ll continue to monitor the situation and make further bans as needed.

Hero Health Updates
Alongside the hotfix update, were also rolling out our first Twist Hero Health Updates:

Arfus: 35 → 25
Al’Akir the Windlord: 35 → 30
The Lich King: 35 → 30
Zul’jin: 35 → 30
Forest Warden Omu: 35 → 30
C’Thun: 35 → 45
Dr. Boom: 45 → 50
King Krush: 35 → 40
Arch-Villain Rafaam: 35 → 40
Guff Runetotem: 35 → 40
N’Zoth, the Corruptor: 35 → 40

As a reminder, we intend to do Hero Health adjustments like these as needed, likely about once a week, and larger-scale adjustments (like Hero Powers, Passives, and decklists) in our normal balance patch windows. After looking at the impact of each round of changes, we’ll have a clearer idea of what and when our next updates will be.

Please note: due to the nature of weekly balance updates, we won’t be expanding dust refunds to the cards corresponding to Hero unlocks for changes to that Hero’s Health, Passive, Hero Power, or decklist for the Whizbang’s Heroes Twist seasons.

Bookmark this page for future Twist Hero Health updates.

8 Likes
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I find this very sad. You blatantly have a problem, i.e. Arfus. Then you assume that a 10 health decrease will help balance the deck. The issue is not with the health. This cannot be fixed similar to battlegrounds. Arfus has far too many tools to his disposal that his health is irrelevant. Let me elaborate for a moment. I just played a game as C’thun (which is already ridiculously weak but I will continue). I understand the nerfs have yet to go live but that is irrelevant as it is simply health. Although I went first I am having to play from behind over and over again due to the power creep of the excavate cards. All the C’thun cards realistically are out of date to a 2 mana deal 2 damage to all enemies and especially the legendaries that he gets. There is actually no possible way for a C’thun to win the match. He cannot scale fast enough before he dies as well as Arfus can just gain his nerf back in the form of Maw and Paw with C’thun to not have an answer to it. Truly, I wonder where the balance has gone in the game. I find it disheartening that this mode in its current state in unplayable and your team are not making strides to actually fix the issue. Keep in mind people are not attached to this mode. Unless meaningful fixes happen fast people will abandon it. Respectfully, use your brains. Until something happens I guess I will just get free dust for the nerfed cards then abandon this mode as I do not see it ever being balanced with a deck as strong as Arfus.

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As a reminder, we intend to do Hero Health adjustments like these as needed, likely about once a week, and larger-scale adjustments (like Hero Powers, Passives, and decklists) in our normal balance patch windows. After looking at the impact of each round of changes, we’ll have a clearer idea of what and when our next updates will be.

*Please note: due to the nature of weekly balance updates, we won’t be expanding dust refunds to the cards corresponding to Hero unlocks."

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I see this, however, it will be too late due to the nature of Twist.

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Ok first of all, chill with the knee-jerk response. Secondly, it’s not just the health change, they’re also fixing an issue where Arfus wasn’t discovering the Shaman and Paladin Excavate legendaries which lowers the pool of hitting the insane high rolls by giving them just a worse pool to work towards. Like sure this seems like an insignificant nerf, but until people play and see the results you can’t go around and just doompost right off the bat without even playing for yourself. Respectfully, you should also use your brain.

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I lost a game as Arfus to C’thun. Before the nerf.

A hero having less health means they die faster, and often before they can do the thing they want. Arfus also has inherent randomness with possibly completely whiffing on which excavate minion they pull. You probably just got unlucky and died to someone with a good hand and draw. Maybe you had a bad draw.

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10

I’m playing exclusively Dr. Boom. The increased health is good. Since the deck is slower, needs more removal to keep up other decks that can fill up their board in a turn. Also, some cards are bricks in my hand. Pozzik, Audio Engineer is weird card. The card itself isn’t a mech. The opponent just play the two mechs next turn. I don’t know what the solution is.

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Will we be able to play this format with friends? Is currently unavailable to challenge a friend, it only can be played in Ladder.

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You’re misunderstanding the situation.

Yes, Arfus is stupidly good, but the real issue is that Death Knight is arguably the strongest class in the game right now, and Excavate is still quite good and quite abusable.

Compare this to C’thun, which is itself an incredibly old legendary that hasn’t been relevant for years, running a slapped-together token deck reliant on randomly generated cards from one of the oldest expansions in Hearthstone, and you can see why using C’thun is something of a hard-mode for Twist at this point.

As a die-hard C’thun fan, I am horrendously disappointed with the decisions made that failed to revamp the old C’thun formula, but the issue is that the strongest Twist decks are the most up-to-date ones with the newest cards, and Arfus having access to the newest class with the fewest nerfs in a playstyle that is still relevant in the current meta obviously means he is going to be horrendously overturned and unbalanced, because if you took Arfus or some of these other Twist decks into Ranked, they’d completely dominate the ladder and a regular deck simply could not function in that kind of meta.

Conversely, C’thun could see play if his Twist deck were imported, but because his deck is built around such an old strategy he’d likely get run over by most current meta decks, even with that health buff, not because there is anything conceptually wrong with C’thun, but because the existing assets he has to work with are the better part of a decade old by this point, and the only way around that is to overtune his gimmick, which is difficult on such a narrow timescale since every single Twist hero has to essentially reinvent the game.

My personal suggestion was playing into the fact that they slotted C’thun into the Druid class and having his followers buff the C’thun hero in addition to the C’thun card, giving him attack and health or armor so he can brawl like a classic Wildeshape Druid, but that might be too much, especially with that kind of health buff, because C’thun essentially has ‘Gain 15 health at start of game’ at this point.

Conversely, Arfus has ‘Lose 5 max health at start of game’, and considering C’thun’s biggest problem was trying to break the 30+ health threshold for an OTK, and C’thun now has a 20 health lead to eat a few more hits and focus on buffing, that means C’thun may be the worst match-up for Arfus going forward and the thing keeping Arfus down as people just start spamming C’thun at ranks where Arfus is prominent, because EVERYBODY has C’thun by this point.

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This is on the known issues list, but we don’t have a timetable on its fix, sorry.

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I would like credit for wins on the character like in previous twist.

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Respectfully, this will change nothing. If you want to cry about a knee-jerk response by all means do. The reality about this and I will say it louder due to the lack of you comprehending what I mean, “HP in a game where HP is a resource does not stop a deck that has insane resources to begin with.” Look at the C’thun vs arfus matchup. Unless C’thun kills them with C’thun, they can just gain all the HP back with Primus. There are literally no bad cards in the deck. It is by definition a better rainbow DK than what is in standard. “Have to wait” Do you really think people in high level of play do not know more than the average person. I am still playing vs 90% Arfus and losing when I am top 500 rn. Please do not talk into a subject without actively understanding how balancing works. This may shave off a 1-5% off the winrate but it is still going to be close to a 75% winrate. Have a nice day.

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If you lost to C’thun then you either had a bad hand or are not great at the game. Sorry to say a fact. The winrate for C’thun is the lowest in the game at 32% 17% versus Arfus.

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Here is the problem already with your statement. C’thun still heavily loses to Arfus in fact just going from the last day of the patch notes. C’thun still is a free win for Arfus. Check out the stats across all ranks with Donkey Hearthstone. I sadly cannot include the link.

Respectfully, HP might seem like an area that would greatly impact a winrate, however, in a game where it is used as a resource, they can just nullify the nerf with other cards like Maw and Paw which C’thun does not have a single target answer for. They have AOE answers for it which are better used when the Arfus goes wide. We can also look at Primus. If C’thun does not OTK them then primus brings them back up the HP of C’Thun’s attack. The issue is they made a hero that far surpasses the others and the only way to fix it realistically is remove Arfus and adjust him so that Twist does not die like every other mode they make.

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Arfus is still completely overpowered, and should just be taken out of the mode, and have a refund-dust period like nerfed cards usually have.

He hard-counters several decks, like Xyrella and Cthun by disabling their powers (discarding Cthun from hand/lowering max hp) and to an extent is able to self-flood hand to deny any bombs from going off (from Dr Boom), while at the same time flooding board and regenerate health from having a bad start, as well as perma-freeze characters.

There are a lot of other heroes in this mode, like another death knight hero, “The Lich King”, so there isnt a lack of choices in this mode. The only lack of choice is from Arfus being too oppressive for every build, so most people will auto-pick Arfus as there is little competition for something that shuts down every build with little to no input.

He would be crazy still if he had the excavate mechanic with a single rune only, and for example 3 card cooldown, but that he can activate it from every rune, means just about every card he plays can activate it. There is just way too much value, from all classes, that he can access with little to no input or investment.

And add to it that his hero power, which only costs 1 mana, lowers cost by as much as 1-3 with the only sacrifice being corpses, something he can flood out, due to the many many many corpse generating cards he has, its not just that he has cards, but those cards can be played for way less than they usually would, dwarfing the value you could get from characters like Rafaam or Kael’thas.

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Make Arfus 10 HP you clowns :smiley: Making the win rate numbers look better on paper doesnt make things balanced … Does none on that dev team ever heard of PLAYTESTING things ? If you played 10 games of this mode you shouldnt have released this thing in such a state.

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Arfus at 20 health is just plain BS. Either the people playing against it in higher ranks have crap rng for their cards or the arfus player got a beyond good rng. Ive played Arfus since twist opened along with a couple others. Win rate has been pretty much the same on all them till this “nerf” which is just bs. Ive lost many games now before turn 5 all due to the fact I have 10 less health than anyone. Arfus went from about me winning 50%-60% of games now to 30-40%. This is plain and simple a bunch of whinners coming out and destroying a fun toon to play because they either suck or got bad rng.

1 Like