The recent December balance update comes right after the first Tour Stop of Rastakhan’s Rumble. It has huge meta implications for the near and far future. The update comes as a bit of surprise with no prior announcement.
At first glance, Druid appears to have been completely torn apart by the nerfs. Delaying Wild Growth by a turn and subsequently delaying Nourish by a turn severely hinders the power of Druid. However, it was interesting that Blizzard decided to nerf these cards that will always be a part of the Standard set.
The explanation provided by the developer team is equally interesting. They wanted to make the ramp cards more difficult to put into Druid decks that don’t take direct advantage of ramping mana. However, in the Standard format, there aren’t really any Druid decks that don’t need mana ramp as part of their core tools.
These cards didn’t necessarily seem to be the problem cards in the Druid class. Cards like Branching Paths, Spreading Plague, and Ultimate Infestation are insanely powerful. These are definitely the cards with the most complaints. However, these cards are also soon rotating out of the Standard set to roam free in Wild.
This must mean the nerf decisions are for the future of the Druid class. Hopefully in the future, Druid will get some more powerful early game tools if we go the way of making ramp a lower part of the identity of Druid. We could focus on strengthening the Beast aspect of the Druid class in the future.
Odd Paladin is a deck which has been slightly overshadowed by the complaints against Druid. It is arguably a more powerful and more present part of the now former meta.
Nerfing Level Up! is probably the best card to nerf. Too many decks struggled with clearing off enough Silver Hand Recruits in order to make Level Up! not a good play.
However, this probably kills off the archetype because Level Up! was the game winning card for Odd Paladin. Finding other ways to push damage and win will be much harder.
Level Up! might be an option within Even Paladin. The Even version doesn’t get the ability to produce as many Recruits with their hero power but have other tools like Drygulch Jailor. It will be interesting to see if Even Paladin decides to utilize the card.
Saronite Chain Gang’s nerf has left Shudderwock Shaman in shambles. However, it nerfs a lot of other decks that utilize the card as well. Shaman has to find a different way to make a viable Shudderwock deck.
Shudderwock can be fitted to a more tempo oriented version. Whether it be through Elementals or some other Battlecry oriented deck, Shudderwock can find its way into a Shaman deck.
Though other decks that were trying to utilize buffs to Saronite Chain Gang, and now the Saronite copy will not have the extra buffs. Sometimes it’s nice to have an extra 2/3 body, but the extra buffed up Saronite helps decks that use cards like Prince Keleseth win games.
Kingsbane Rogue finds itself out of a control archetype without the lifesteal effect from Leeching Poison. Kingsbane could still find its place within a Tempo Pirate version, but it shouldn’t have that insurance of being able to heal so much in the late game.
Kingsbane will now able to make more proper use of Raiding Party. They actually will draw the pirates rather than just using it to draw Kingsbane.
Going forward, all of these changes are definitely healthy for the Hearthstone metagame. However, the new oppressor is Hunter, which some have seen is slightly too powerful especially in a competitive meta.
Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via the official Hearthstone website.
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