The hype for Whispers of the Old God has been growing, as more cards are getting revealed daily. At this point we've got a pretty good grasp on some of the themes that are going to be introduced.
What we haven’t heard much about yet is the card changes that Blizzard has promised to arrive with standard. The developers have said that the information on which cards will be changed will arrive close to the release of the expansion so for now all we can do is speculate.
Many pro players have already taken the opportunity and presented their “balance pass”, a list of card changes they would like to see. While I myself have written plenty of articles on cards I would like and wouldn't like to be changed, there hasn't been a good time to consolidate the those that I find most urgent.
This is part one which centers on ten changes to class balance that I would like to see. Tommorow, I will talk about the changes I would make on the neutral cards.
Druid
[card]Innervate[/card]
This is pretty much the first card on every balance pass out there and it is very warranted. Druid's ability to play 5 or 7 mana cards as soon as turn 3 is one of the things that have helped the class to the very top of the meta. My suggestion here is a bit unorthodox as I would introduce a whole new keyword.
I really dislike how reluctant Blizzard have been to adding new keywords and because each new one is a big deal, Blizzard is probably never going to add a negative one. It ruins the mood and the moment of the announcement. But negative conditions are often one of the best ways to balance interesting design while making sure it keeps its punch factor intact.
The keyword I would intruduce for Innervate is Cooldown. RPG player should be able to guess what this means. Once you have played one copy of a card with the cooldown keyword you will not be able to play another one for the rest of that turn. I believe this solution suits Innervate well and would also fit other 0 mana cards in the future that may be too explosive.
Another suggestion I have seen elsewhere is to make it reduce the cost of your next card by 2. This erases the ability to stack Innervates and also means you cannot use the discount on two 1-drops. This is not a bad suggestion either and I wouldn't mind if that ends up being the case.
[card]Savage Roar[/card]
Oh, I am sorry, did you expect me to give an explanation as to why this card is on the list? It really shouldn't need one, considering what we have been seeing the last couple of months. Last year I declared it the #5 most likely card to keep causing issues in Hearthstones future. What I said back then still stands. Cheap instantaneous damage is one of the most dangerous elements of TCGs like Hearthstone and needs to be kept under very tight wraps.
As for the nerf in question, this change would reduce the damage of the infamous combo to “only” 12 damage, but that is also all it will be capable of. It would not be able to scale beyond this by using minions already present on the board, and its lower ceiling is also drastically reduced. Using Savage Roar with two minions would now only yield four damage and using it with only 1 would be nothing short of disastrous tempo-wise. I honestly think this would suffice but I can also see Blizzard going nuclear on this card considering for how long it has been an issue.
Mage
[card]Fireball[/card]
Mage is a class where it is hard to pinpoint which cards are in need of change and yet it is easy to argue that some change is needed. The one card I think would be worth touching is definitely [card]Fireball[/card]. For as long as classic is locked in standard players will have access to [card]Archmage Antonidas[/card] and so Fireballs need to be toned down a bit. Right now with its 1,5 damage to mana ratio, it is very generous. I will still say this is one of the less needed changes though.
Also, before people mention [card]Ice Block[/card], I really don't think that card is an issue and I got other changes lined up in the neutrals cards that will address some of the Mage decks that tend to benefit too much from the time it buys.
Hunter
[card]Kill Command[/card]
Lackluster card releases for the past many months have planted Hunter firmly in the bottom-tier of classes, and as such one could think that there is nothing really needed to be changed. From a pure look at the meta, this is true but the reason for all of these lackluster releases was that Hunter's vanilla arsenal was so powerful that it blew the balance several times and has led to being the most nerfed class in the history of Hearthstone.
Hunters' complete disregard for the opponents board has proven hard to manage and there is no card that exemplifies this better than Kill Command. Being a low mana card, though, there is not much that can be adjusted before the card goes from playable to useless, but I believe its non-charged value can be reduced in order to make Hunters less explosive when they can't get a beast on the board. It is hard to say if this will be sufficient through.
Paladin
[card]Divine Favor[/card]
There is a simple rule about draw power in TCGs: Once you mess it up, you have really messed it up. It is one of the most absolute rules that can be seen across all TCGs. Divine Favor remains one of the most potent draw spells in Hearthstone, at times drawing upwards of six cards. It has pushed various kinds of aggressive paladin decks to absurd heights, last seen with Secret Paladin. Right now it has been laying low due to most other decks being very fast and generally having few cards in hand, but if that changes in standard, then we will once again look at the full power of this spell. This should be adjusted beforehand and for this reason I would actually suggest a complete makeover.
Scaling draw power is one of those things that rarely turns out well. [card]Starving Buzzard[/card] was the perfect example of this and [card]Battle Rage[/card] has been powering various combo decks in the past. At the end of the day card draw in HS is not a hard formula to balance. It needs to cost more than the cards it can draw, or if it can consistantly match its cost then it needs a really good excuse. If it outmatches its manacost though, then there is no excuse.
Priest
There is no card in Priest worth changing. Move along.
Rogue
[card]Preparation[/card]
I already presented my custom keyword Cooldown and it is very applicable here. Preparation already doesn't stack and cannot be made much more specific than it already is. Straight up nerfing it is not really warranted either as Rogue is in a mixed position in the meta right now.
Preparation is a very explosive card, however, and only being able to use one each turn would cap how much power Rogues can output in a single combo without reducing the power of Preparation in those cases where you only have one, geting a [card]Sprint[/card] out on turn 4, for example. This change allows Preparation to maintain a lot of its power but should unlock more design space within Rogue.
Shaman
[card]Rockbiter Weapon[/card]
Aggro Shaman is a really tough deck to adjust. There a lot of cards in it that might be slightly too good, but none of them are in obvious need of a change. With a lot of other aggressive decks likely to be toned down and a lot of anti-aggro cards going out in Standard, Rockbiter Weapon has to be looked at though, even if the departure of [card]Crackle[/card] will mitigate the damage outbut somewhat. 3 damage for one mana has always been high and with how powerful it has proven to be when coupled with Windfury, there is really no reason for this card to not be on the same manacost as [card]Frostbolt[/card] and other 3 damage spells.
Warlock
This next change will require a little explanation.
When it comes to making balance changes it is very much the case that less is more. The fewer changes you need to make, the better it will overall turn out. But looking at Warlock, even when losing some of their most potent cards like [card]Imp-losion[/card] there are still so many things that arguably need fixing. So, my suggestion is dealing with the root of the problem instead.
All Hero powers have an innate cooldown of one, but life tap with a cooldown of two would be locked from use on the turn after you've used it.
This unlocks a lot of design space in Warlocks and also means a lot of other cards will not need change. All the Giants, [card]Malygos[/card], [card]Doomguard[/card] and a lot of other cards that warlocks have abused to such an extent in the past. If their hero power was to be balanced better, then all of these cards can be spared and, in the case of the neutral cards, still be useful for other classes.
That being said I do not think this change have a very good chance of making it through which will likely cause the need of a lot of other card nerfs.
Warrior
[card]Battle Rage[/card]
Everything I said about Divine Favor can be repeated here. Every Warrior combo deck from Panda Giants to Patron Warrior has been powered by the absurd draw potential of Battle Rage. Every time it's been the draw power at the root of the problem and every time it has been the combo part and not the deck engine that bit the nerfs.
Blizzard should take this opportunity and adjust this now before the next big combo arrives. We are already seeing Worgen combo being a thing, a deck I would not be surprised to see targeted. But again, the source of all of this lies in the draw power, because card draw is like life in a TCG: it will find a way and once it does, we will be back here, seeing another combo nerfed, for the sins of Battle Rage.
[card]Brawl[/card]
This is a tough one to explain. Brawl is just one of those cards that polarizes opinions. It is an anti-aggro card. And it can fizzle. My opinion on the card is that in its current state it is too versatile. Too often it is closer to a [card]Flamestrike[/card] or a [card]Twisting Nether[/card] rather than a [card]Consecration[/card], and that is not where it is prized. Even when the board is limited to only two big minions, Brawl can still act as an [card]Assassinate[/card] for one of them, and a double one if you got an over performing [card]Armorsmith[/card].
There is a line between punishing overcommitment, and just punishing commitment overall, and right now I am quite certain that Brawl is too close to the latter. Its versatility in removing a bunch of minions, regardless of how many or how strong they are is quite excessive and as such I think it would be for the better to have this spell lifted in mana cost.
That is it for my class balance changes. There is no doubt that Blizzard will likely find their own solutions, but I still enjoy writing about this topic. Come back tommorow for a list of the cards from the neutral.
