Upcoming Balance Changes and What to Expect From them!

One of the biggest nerfs in Hearthstone is coming and two of the most infamous Hearthstone cards are getting balanced in the upcoming patch.

Introduction

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Hello everyone, tonight we are in a rush. Simply because of the changes that were just announced: leeroy-jenkins and starving-buzzard nerfs.

In case you didn’t know:

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/forum/topic/14279128810#1

  • Leeroy Jenkins now costs 5 (up from 4)
  • Starving Buzzard now costs 5 (up from 2) and now has 3 Attack and 2 Health (up from 2 Attack and 1 Health)

Now, how do these changes affect the game? I will try to predict a little about the effect of it on the meta, and go thru everything that exploded in my mind the moment I read those changes.

Effect on the Cards Themselves

Alright so, let us try to not focus on the meta right now, I will try to make this clean in the next section.

First Change: Leeroy-jenkins now costs 5(up from 4). This is big in some cases, but small in some others.

  • Where is it big? Leeroy will not be able to be used as a combo tool as often as it used to be, no more you will be able to see power-overwhelming+faceless-manipulator combos; no more you will be able to see 2xshadowstep combos;  you will however still be able to see windfury+ 2xrockbiter-weapon combos, but this last combo literally vanished from the game in the past month.
  • Where is it small? Leeroy is still good! It’s still a 6-damage finisher minion that you will still use on your face rush deck as a finisher, nothing has changed for decks like: Paladin Rush, Warlock Rush, Rogue Rush, or anything that has “Rush” written on it, well maybe something will change for the Hunter Rush, but that is what we will be talking now….

Second Change: starving-buzzard now costs 5 (up from 2) and now has 3 Attack and 2 Health (up from 2 attack and 1 Health). I would like to comment on this:

  • First: The card became utterly unplayable. The reason behind the Buzzard being good was that it was a 2-mana minion that, during one turn, would allow you to cycle thru your cards as you dropped them, the real flaw in the system was the overpowered combo with unleash-the-hounds.
  • Second: with this change Hunter now joins Paladins in the “I have no draw mechanism” boat, and altho that can seem like the end of the world, we could end up noticing it is not: Hunter still has a billion of strong mechanics, of course none of them as overpowered as the BuzzardUnleash combo, but with at least the Buzzards out, and possibly 4 open slots in the deck, you have the possibility of building something completely different, remember savannah-highmane is still the strongest 6-drop in the entire game, remember mad-scientist interaction with the hunter class and its eaglehorn-bow+Secrets is still huge. It will take some time until a new and good hunter list pops out so everyone starts copying it and playing it again, but it definently will.
  • Third: Now, to be fair, I do think this nerf was over the top, 4 mana would still make the combo itself bad, but 5?

The Effect on the Meta

Alright now this is the thing I wanted to talk the most! The meta! Oh boy how it will change!

Everyone noticed that hunter’s current form will be gone forever! But that is just the tip of the iceberg, Miracle rogue is also gone! And so is Handlock’s 20+ Damage OTK combo, and what does that mean? Consistency Meta!

Yap, with both Miracle Rogue and Hunters gone as well as super OTK-ish combos out-of-the-way we can now start focusing on making our decks more consistent rather than bursty, expect to see a rise on Control numbers as well as strong Midrange decks to counter these control decks.

The number of different decks being played, even tho we will have the two strongest decks in the game being taken out of it is going to be increased greatly, more options and diversity. Be prepared for a whole new meta gaming after september 22th.

With all of that being said, how do I feel about these changes?

A Wild List Has Appeared

Alright, as I always say: There is no Nuba writing without a Nuba list! So, I introduce you this week’s not-hunter Meta Deck: A Control Warrior!

This list is perfected to fight hunters, as one might have noticed, the thing I decided to go back to here is the azure-drake, as I think Warrior lost a lot with its removal: No more draw, no more spellpower. And altho I really wanted to use two of those, I still need to use harrison-jones in order to fight off the massive wave of hunters I play against on a daily basis. I hope you all enjoyed this list, it was pretty fun making it and testing it too, the results were great!

In case you prefer the image to the list I posted here, here’s the image!

Conclusion

These changes will affect the game, by a lot, and while these news are huge, we still have 10 days before the nerf hits.

We all have something to do before this Nerf hits, be it prepare for the new meta, theorycrafting completely new and different decks, or be it spamming the ladder with Hunter to try to get that easy legend before the nerf bat hits, whatever it is that you plan to do in Hearthstone, I wish  you the best of the lucks.

Hope you enjoyed my little analyzis on today’s changes, I also hope to see you guys more often here at Hearthstoneplayers, see ya!

Cuddles,

Nuba

 /BudaBudie
 @TheNubaHS

 /TheNubaHS


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