Priest and Druid get the shaft in the latest round of Hearthstone nerfs

In our recent interview with the Hearthstone dev team, the topic of what to do about the game’s turbulent Priest class came up. “We want to make sure that the people playing against [Priest] aren’t tearing their hair out,” senior game designer Liv Breeden told us, and so it is that a new Hearthstone patch is set to arrive tomorrow, bringing with it a new round of nerfs for the Priest. 

If you’re more of a Druid hater—good news—that’s getting hit too, and there are also some tweaks coming to Battlegrounds, as well as some teasing of what to expect from that mode’s incoming major update. But first, let’s deal with those Standard nerfs, with developer commentary to explain why action needed to be taken:

Apotheosis: Old: Give a minion +2/+3 and Lifesteal. → New: Give a minion +1/+2 and Lifesteal.

Currently, it can feel like you must remove every Priest minion because of the threat Apotheosis poses. A slight reduction in the buff here should lessen that urgency and make the minions post-Apotheosis easier to deal with. The other side of this nerf is the Samuro + Apotheosis combo. The punishment for playing minions into this combo is too much at the moment, so while we’d like to keep some of that tension of resource commitment, we don’t want the punishment to be a full heal for the opponent. The reduction in attack here helps get that combo into a healthier push/pull state.

Renew: Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]

We decided to change Renew specifically because we believe this change makes the largest impact towards curbing the chains of generation in Priest. At 2 mana, Renew has to be more thoughtful inclusion during deckbuilding, won’t be generated by Wandmaker, and takes another mana reduction to get to 0. While Priest’s identity looks different in future expansions, we wanted to take this opportunity to reign in their card generation and build a better match experience for both players.

Gibberling: Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]

Currently Gibberling is the cause of many “non-games”, matches that are heavily lopsided in the early game and can have their outcome decided far too early. We want to lower the frequency of this occurrence and Gibberling at 2 mana should result in many more games where opponents can respond to an early board of this little menace.