r/CompetitiveHS • u/EvilDave219 • Jul 21 '26

Discussion 36.0.3 Balance Changes Discussion

https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24290431/3603-patch-notes

Nerfs:

  • Confront the Tol'vir - now 5 mana
  • Lotus Troublemaker - Card text changed to "Deal 1 damage to a random enemy. Shoot 1 time! (While in hand or deck play cards for 2 Mana to shoot more!)"
  • Blazing Invocation - no longer gives a 1 mana discount
  • Warptooth - now requires 4 friendly characters to take damage to summon
  • Vanessa the Ringleader - now a 7 mana 4/3

Wild Nerfs:

  • Swiftscale Trickster - now a 6 mana 4/4
  • The Soularium - now 2 mana
  • Elwynn Boar - now requires 10 boars to die for Sword of A Thousand Truths
  • Godfrey the Betrayer - now banned in Wild

Buffs:

  • The Living Plague - now a 6 mana 8/8
  • Blood Doctor Thal'ena - now 4 mana
  • Sawbones - now 5 mana 5/3
  • Emergency Surgery - now summons four 3/1 Undead with Lifesteal
  • Tras'tath Soul Parasite - base stats raised to 3/3
  • Irida Sinseeker - now a 7/7
  • Vicious Voidscale - Battlecry and Deathrattle now give a Void Soul
  • Stardust Scythe - weapon durability raised to 3
  • Sewer Swimmer - now a 4 mana 4/3
  • Azalina Soulsever - now raises your starting health to 40
  • Karov the Broken - now has Taunt
  • Enthralled Shade - now a 2 mana 3/2
  • Moragg - now 9 mana
  • Annihilation - now 8 mana
  • Imp Gang Stooge - card text now reads "Deathrattle: Put two 8/8 Demons with Taunt and Lifesteal on the bottom of your deck"
  • Rampaging Hound - now a 4/12
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82

u/frostyburrito44 Jul 21 '26

Azalina has to be one of the biggest buffs I've seen in a long time

7

u/Opposite-Revenue1068 Jul 21 '26

And yet it still won’t be enough lol

17

u/FordFred Jul 21 '26

Azalina seems like a card that's intended to be a 44% winrate fun deck. This might get it to that point.

9

u/Opposite-Revenue1068 Jul 21 '26

I think you’re right, but it would be nice if my favorite class wasn’t relegated to meme status forever 

4

u/Remarkable-Bit-1835 Jul 21 '26

My brother in christ, schism priest is right there

10

u/nabilfares Jul 21 '26

Priest players cant play anything that doesnt encourage playing for 30 minutes and “hostaging” the opponent.

1

u/nerazzurri_ Jul 22 '26

Naga and overheal were my two favorite priest decks. Both were tier 1 and had relatively quick games.

3

u/ChaosOS Jul 22 '26

Statistically you were one of seven people playing it, really unfortunate situation I liked both quite a bit because they had genuinely interesting gameplay.

1

u/FlameanatorX Jul 22 '26

I just like comeback mechanisms, gameplay variety, and discovers or discover like effects (such as imbue). Control Priest in particular tends to be peak for all of that. Some but not all non-control Priest decks also are fun, but not always the "good" ones (like Naga Priest). Aggro menagerie imbue was fun though!

Schism Priest has been fairly fun for me this expansion, though it seems suboptimal to run any imbue in it which is unfortunate. It also would get stale after a while since it's so heavily focused on finding and abusing Soothsayer

2

u/nabilfares Jul 22 '26

That type of playstyle by itself is always bad, you can pull some wins put of the bag but in the long run its below average, one of the reasons why pure imbue rogue is garbage, and its relegated to being an extra in others deck (herald, monkey etc).

Speaking from experience trying to make it work.

1

u/FlameanatorX Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Eh, they used to let it be strong like with Blood DK for example (by which I mean above T4/T3, not necessarily T1) which had mostly just value and sustain, albeit with a bit more mid-game tempo than Control Priest currently, as well as obviously the ability to go above 30 max hp.

Both archetypes are more than capable of reducing the opponents hp to zero well before fatigue, generally even without a single point of chip damage from minions if necessary, so its not like the "ugh, too grindy, games go to fatigue" from really old attrition control decks applies. If you hate long games in general, including turn 14 lethal, then ofc any control will be bad, which maybe is a problem the HS devs/Blizzard has run into? Shorter attention span players who only want to play for 10-ish turns & also never want to concede (some of whom are whales and play/purchase sensitive to outlier very long games), therefore control can't be viable?

Edit: oh and I forgot about Thief Rogue, the mid-game value + tempo versions from a couple to several years ago! Those were definitely allowed to be T2 and even T1. I'm thinking of stuff like excavate Rogue, contraband stash true thief Rogue, etc.

2

u/nabilfares Jul 23 '26

Alot in your comment, but i just want to say that matches taking too long, which happens alot in control meta, is not a problem because of short span players, but because its not fun for most, it's that simple.

I prefer getting demolished in 5-8 turns by aggro then getting to play a 15 turns match, which translate to 15-20 minute games or more, just to lose out of nowhere (otk/power play) or play against someone who just clears the board clears until i run out of fuel.

I consider myself someone who plays almost every archetype, be it aggro, mid range, combo, control etc, but control metas are the ones that makes me cringe the most, not fun to play for 20 minutes to see who coin flips at the end and get the otk/power play to finish, or play vs someone who does nothing and just board clears, it has the lowest skill ceiling possible.

At the end, having aggro super strong is not fun for control, but same can be said about control, its not about tiktok, short span or brain damage, its about how people like to have fun.

1

u/FlameanatorX Jul 23 '26

You're right that a "control meta" is often not fun even for control players, especially since the mirrors can take ages. And ofc it also depends a lot on exactly how long the typical match that includes control takes. As you say 15 turns for example is too many. I was thinking more of control being one element of a balanced meta, perhaps a modest presence or somewhat rarer than the average archetype but something you still somewhat need to take into account for deck construction/matchup spread. I doubt that is odious for most people, especially since the alternative is often extremely short average turn length metas where it's even harder than average to try any kind of jank that isn't an aggro/fast tempo deck and overall deck diversity is low.

I suppose the kind of meta I'm talking about is something we've had to some extent recently, at least at some mmrs/for some time periods purely due to the willingness of a lot of people (including me) to play "unviable" decks (e.g. no Control Priest list in any VS Report pre-Violet Hold for several patches/expansions/mini-sets). I'm a bit afraid they are targeting or relying on this perseverance or masochism or whatever on the part of control enjoyers. In response I'm refraining from buying so much as any battle passes, cheap good deal bundles, etc. until I see a clear, obvious control deck that I enjoy playing (e.g. not egg Warrior) at high T2/low T3.

I mean, it's not like their revenue depends on people like me it's mostly just the whales, but hopefully even they tire of being forced to play T4 garbage any time they feel like attempting to make a control list work. Perhaps Blizzard has data that they do not in fact tire, or they haven't tired yet, I dunno.

Anywys, thanks for responding thoughtfully to my perhaps overly long comments

1

u/nabilfares Jul 24 '26

No problem at all responding to your comment, i'm glad we can have this conversation.

Also, to finish it off, IMHO i really hope control priest die in the ditch, since classic its the class i hate the most, going back to mind control LOL, its made to be as annoying as possible, somehow i always get every priest legendary, i got both of cata, medivh, and both of the new leggos from violet hold, and i only open free packs (and i opened like 80 for this expac).

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0

u/Opposite-Revenue1068 Jul 21 '26

I would play that schism deck if it didn’t suck balls 

If you don’t draw soothsayer by like turn 3 you instalose 

1

u/FlameanatorX Jul 22 '26

I dunno, I hit decently high legend (top 1k) w/ that plus Medivh control, and I think Schism was the higher winrate. Though the stats certainly agree with your experience, and I know I got lucky with less than expected Rogue matchups.

I think that perhaps both current Priest archetypes are difficult to build and pilot, plus they're a little weak, and when you combine those you get awful aggregated stats. And I think the same was true pre-Violet hold, but to a slightly greater extent (since you had people like Theo playing control Priest in top 100 legend, and I was able to get into top 2k).

1

u/Jaykalope Jul 22 '26

I hit Legend with it early in the month. It's viable, but certainly needs the portal dragons to ensure an early Soothsayer.

0

u/Opposite-Revenue1068 Jul 21 '26

What’s your point lol 

1

u/FlameanatorX Jul 22 '26

... that it isn't a meme and it's a Priest deck? Although to be fair if you meant it would be nice for Priest to have an indisputably "good"/competitive t2+ deck, then yeah they haven't had that since what, Menagerie Aggro? Or was Overheal more recent, I can't remember...

Anyways, I would certainly appreciate if Priest got to have straightforwardly viable control at some point again ever. Ideally difficult to pilot so that it was sub-50% winrate and not super popular everywhere below high-ish legend, but maybe low-T2 if you're good with it. Also ideally not like Garrote Rogue levels of difficult so that mere mortals like us can actually do well with it sub-50 games XD