While it doesn’t come as a huge surprise, we now have an official confirmation that there will be no balance changes before World Championship. Top 8 players from around the world will face each other this weekend (December 18-19), and that’s most likely the reason why we won’t see a patch this week. Let’s say that a patch happened on Tuesday, then those players would have to submit their decks earlier, it would leave them with almost no time to playtest the new meta, and the tournament would also depend on who guessed the new best decks correctly based on 2-3 days of experience.
Of course, it sucks a bit for an average player who most certainly won’t compete at that level of play, but I think it’s for the better. After all, it’s the most important event in the competitive Hearthstone, so giving it some extra care is a good thing.
The current meta is not in a BAD state, to be honest. As in, Blizzard doesn’t need to attend to it immediately, because some deck is tearing the meta apart. But there are a few decks that could use a nerf. That’s why we will probably see a patch early next week – before everyone goes on a Christmas break. Otherwise, we would have to wait until after the new year to get any balance changes, which is why the next week seems most likely. Do keep in mind that nothing is officially confirmed and this is just my educated guess – but I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave the meta without any changes until early January.
There will be no balance changes before Worlds.
— Celestalon???????? #ABetterABK???? (@Celestalon) December 14, 2021
In terms of nerfs probably trogg down to a 1/1. Possibly they might touch humgous owl reducing the damage its deathrattle does maybe to 5, so a full board without a double Tasmins phylactery can’t kill an armoured up warrior so easily and a board clear is more of a priority in combination.
Otherwise I’m not sure what is actually warranting a nerf maybe the Tamsin hero the battlecry draw 2 cards instead? Although to be fair with the way I’m playing her at the moment that would be a buff so I don’t lose key combo pieces.
Who would expect a balance patch one week after launch??? I don’t even think anything needs a nerf except maybe the trogg but I’m not even sure about that.
Seriously just because people are too lazy to try to design their own decks doesn’t mean everyone else should suffer their a-d-d. There is massive room for growth and experimentation right now and nothing is broken. And I would say if there was. I’ve said before they need to stop thinking that balance patches are planned meta designs like a new set, but this is ridiculously early to be thinking about a balance patch. ONE WEEK after launch of a major set. Come on now. The owls are slow and I rarely face an owl-lock. I seriously don’t know where the idea of a balance patch would be coming from unless maybe they want to make control decks better or buff something specific.
And also, the last balance update they did was objectively abhorrent. They went overboard on 3 different unjustified pirate warrior buffs (before mini-set added yet another crucial pirate). If they wanted to push that then why couldn’t they just wait for the mini-set when it would get a natural buff, rather than artificially funnel the meta to a non-interactive non-intuitive simplistic deck to rule the meta when the deck was already fine?? Someone won the Stormwind major tournament with pirate warrior which really shows how overboard they went pushing it for a boredom balance update. The other genius thing they did was ruin Illucia in the dumbest way possible. They killed the card’s effect but were too dumb to remember that they should be reverting the mana nerf from 3 to the original 2 or 1 mana to even be remotely playable. Once everyone disenchanted it then the mistake was permanent as Illucia could never be opened from a pack again after disenchanting. But if they had kept the card as it is we could have a nice tech option for actual fun skill disruption plays against this fresh and proper meta. And surprise surprise priest is nowhere to be seen now for 2 entire sets. Must be pretty smart to delete a card for an archetype (control priest) that is notoriously impossible to play with in this meta. Two thirds of the year control priest is unplayable but they kill the one good creatively designed card that it even had. If they wait until January that’s still only a month or less of this meta which doesn’t even have any problems right now. Some people would ask for balance updates every week if they could. But a card game with set expansions 6 times a year SHOULD NOT PLAN arbitrary balance updates in advance without any reasoning other than casual boredom.
People are allowed to have fun their own way, not sure where you get off calling them lazy because they want to have fun playing the game, rather than getting stomped into the ground playing a sub standard deck.
You need to remember not everyone playing has endless time to do so, experimenting with making decks is a time investment many people cannot commit to.
We can wait for Nerfs. World Championship is here!!! 😀
Good! It is too early in the meta for balance changes I think, and there is not a single deck that is dominating and cannot be countered.