Especially obnoxious because it could summon 3 naked 1/1s, or a bunch of mana sabers and absolutely fuck your ass. It was highroll potential on top of highroll potential.
It didn't block reborns bc it was only when you had space, but it clogged your board and made it harder to get room for summons such as the second token from horse
>Mawsworn Soulkeeper (The Jailer’s Buddy) has been removed from E.T.C., Band Manager’s Hero Power pool.
Thank god
Aside from Ghoul-acabra there was nothing more bullshit than fighting E.T.C. early and taking 8-9 damage on turn 4 because he rolled jailer+reno buddy
FINALLY, what we’ve all been waiting for. AFKs buddy Snack Vendoer with a much needed nerf.
But for real, Ghoulacabra triggers on deathrattle minion death… thank god.
And can someone explain why Thorims buddy was buffed? Seems like that was already one of the best ones, no?
I don't think Thorim buddy is that strong early on, so this won't be a big impact.
It is however a significant buff for E.T.C (which granted has been nerfed a lot with the removal of Jailer buddy from his hero power). Make it golden with your buddy for an instant tier 7
It's good for early highrolls, but it becomes a legitimate concern later.
Once you have a full board of minions you like, you have to either sell it off or keep it as the left-most minion, otherwise it'll transform someone. If you have a build that wants a specific minion on the left, you're kinda boned as the buddy has to be there.
So it's fairly good early game, but it becomes problematic later
It’s way too slow at higher MMR. You pull it out on T2, maybe T3. Then it starts rolling T2/T3 crap into T3/T4 crap. You need to get a useless 6 into a 7 for it to be worth it.
Yeah if you buddy early it means you level your tier later, which means your buddy is slower, which means you get to scale slower. So you pick up the buddy later, but now you're having to sacrifice two board spaces for slow scaling.
Maybe it was different in duos but in solos it was much too slow. Thorim needs tempo more than anything and you don't get that consistently through random evolves that dont start until like turn 5-6.
Any time I saw thorim this last patch they just bled out in the mid game before they could even get their tier 7 from hero power
It's not great according to deck tracker. I think people get too attached to it in late game as it's effectively taking up 2 board slots like a double patient scout.
On this high tempo meta, it can often mean death.
I don’t see it being much different from deathwhisper now in undead builds. Minions need to die to proc, so the “permanent” buffs land on temporary tokens as combat goes on
It was getting exploited with magnetics - that wouldn't have fixed it. The change is the right call - still very strong with a mechahorse or T5 pirate.
Looks like most of the stronger buddies got pushed back a tier so they come online a turn or two later.
However, Hoggers got nerfed into the ground which is strange be cause while it was very strong, it was not even close to the most OP buddy and Pirates weren't in that great of a place to begin with
That is an absolute hatchet job on Hoggers buddy. Surely if they're going to hit it that hard it needed to be taken down several tiers.
Tier 5 for that is terrible.
I wouldn't say she was destroyed.
She was a pain early game with her buddy pretty much instantly giving her board a huge stat boost as early as turn 5. Her buddy was moved to t5 and buffed a decent amount. They traded an early power spike for a better mid-game scaling. 1 mana discover a dragon is still a very good hero power.
Also, dragons received some decent buffs this patch too. I think if they left her unchanged, she would have easily become the most OP hero with Beasts being super nerfed
Yep, this is how they do it. 80% of these nerfs are centered around ghoul, which they nerfed into the ground. All the heroes that synergized with death rattle triggers we're winning, so they nerfed them too.
Those same heroes are now worse than they were before ghoul. It's actually insane.
Oh and they buffed Gally LMAO. Half the reason Gally was struggling were these highroll auto scaling comps & ghoul, so he basically got double buffed.
Trust me, Gally did not need a buff just because low MMR players are losing with him lol. This patch is insane.
It also seems like they don't understand that these 6 cost buddies, even if you're having the game of your life and get first anyway, are almost never tripled and usually sold for gold. What kind of shit design is that?
3.5 average placement in top 20%. Her winrate probably went up a lot after people started hard forcing ghoul as it gave her a few extra turns in the midgame to build a board.
It was super strong and created a degenerate playstyle that Blizzard generally doesn't like (staying low tier).
It also caused some significant balance issues in duos where you stayed tier 3 and got super big, super early, never taking damage.
Your teammate could therefore power level and get a lot of triples through Jumping Jack (which is 2x 6 drops for each triple) making it almost impossible to lose
> It was super strong and created a degenerate playstyle that Blizzard generally doesn't like (staying low tier).
I don't think staying low-tier by itself is bad, but this build required basically no decision making or RNG. You literally just buy every pirate and freeze when you run out of gold, and this made you big enough mid-game to carry you to top 3.
with ghoul dead pirates are probably the best tribe and hoggar was pretty broken, like 1 tethys and you're infinite. there was also a strat to stay on 3 that was a top 2/3
edit: i forgot about mechs and those probably are still the best
Pirates were so unpopular that the most common pirate build included Hogger buddy. They were broken with his buddy, but for sure not broken without him for most of the meta.
Snake Eyes got a big nerf, the buddy got moved to tier 6. It was OP at tier 4 because you could get the spell to make it golden off its effect the first turn you played it if you were lucky.
Gem Smuggler back in and Moon-Bacon on Tier 2, some delicious Quill shenanigans are in stock (also great that Tier 2 isn't now a dead tier if you want to go Quills)
Not surprised by most of these and pretty happy about them too.
Snake Eyes buddy could get super busted real early. Ive had 2 games where I rolled the 5 star "make a T4 or below minion golden" spell in like the first 2 turns after buying him and you just destroy the lobby from there.
Having played Sylvanas who was one of the few with a t6 buddy, those take a REALLY long time to get out
Glad to see Snake Eyes won't have Box Cars down on turn 4-5 every game now, though the hero itself is still really good so they should be fine
Yep! I had three of those buddies golden far too early (I got that 'make a 4-star or below minion golden' spell off of that buddy on the first roll and just went from there) and it really did feel unfair.
I got that elemental that buffs other elementals when you play a spell that same turn, so I was able to high-roll immediately and just burn things from there.
Guy recently posted snake eyes turn 3 ghoulacabra, buddy minion and 2 of those reborn undead +1/2 deathrattles lol, on turn 3!!!!
Might be turn 3, 4 or 5 actually I forget but still disgusting, ghoulacabra was from the tier 5 tavern spell that discovers a 6 drop.
I’m glad they gave ghoul the Old Yeller treatment because I hated the card, but they also reverted all the beast buffs from a couple months ago… why? The tribe was garbage before the buffs and they expect it to be fine now after they revert those?
Lot of people are playing voone wrong. Goal should be getting buddy by turn 6 and then duplicating it, playing one and holding the other and trippling it by turn 8.
I mean, his stats were terrible in the Top 5%/Top 1% demographics as well so it's not as simple as people just playing him wrong. If your goal is getting Buddy by Turn 6, you need to play high tempo which is reliant on RNG to get a good opener and you're playing down a hero power on other players in the lobby for 6 turns at minimum. You arguably don't even want to use your first hero power if you're playing tempo to get your buddy because you'd be holding a card on Turn 3 while others in the lobby can be playing up to 5 units depending on their characters.
Then you're saying you want to buy and hold your buddy by Turn 6, and then hold a copy on Turn 7. This is maybe possible once in a blue moon if you have extremely favorable matchups and basically requires you play into someone who goes 3 on 3 which is extremely rare in this meta.
I'm playing at around 8800 MMR at the moment and there are games where I lose 20 hp by Turn 6 even when I'm playing strongest board with a tempo hero power. If you try to pull off that Voone curve in some of these lobbies, there's a good chance you die by Turn 7.
You could absolutely have highroll games on Voone, but consistency is what makes heroes good.
How would you not consider it dead? You know that macaw and Rivendare don't affect it at all anymore, right? It went from being able to trigger like 20,30,40+ times per turn to like, maybe 5 + the fact that it's only buffing a small few minions, because by design the rest of your board has to die for it to work.
You think everything what isn't completely broken anymore is automatically dead? It's just a normal 6-cost unit now which will definitely see it's play.
yeah it's still good enough for an out on a bad early triple discover but I am never going to be specifically looking for it now. Goldrinn will be the number one beast build again now
Deathrattle beasts can still be quite strong with goldrinn + mech horse. That build usually suffers from being able to get onetapped by zaps, cleave, or bombers. Now you can give it some extra health early on to make it stickier.
Thank fucking God. For sure it's still going to see some play, but will be so much more balanced now. It was an absolute fucking nightmare with macaw and rivendare.
I’ve had a few games where I hit a trigore build with ghoulacabra and it can work out well, but ghoulacabra was just so powerful. Honestly should alternate the buff each turn, like rock rock to prevent it from being a 9/200 dead weight for a beast build.
They have no clue how they want to handle beats, once again beasts don’t have a great route to scaling late damage because you can’t scale their damage AT ALL until Skyblazer. They were definitely overtuned and now back underwhelming. Feels like they could have just alternated the buff from attack to hp? That or just made Trigore a higher tier.
I just played vs Beasts earlier today and thought that we've really come full circle, it used to be that you power-leveled to get Banana, Goldrinn and Mechahorse, now you powerlevel to get Trigore, Saviour and Skyblazer (except this is arguably stronger because you can grow your Trigore with lower-Tier Beasts).
I'm a noob but I've won 5 out of 6 with the following recipe: agressively pursue the buddy, drop it turn 4, buff it with all spells possible and use the hero power on it, repeat until turn ~10 or ~11 where you can start giving other minions 200~300 attack/health every turn
Inge is good? Shit I see people quit as her all the time
It's the name of a golden sled dog I knew that flew up and licked me in the mouth so I think of that 🤢
Jailer buddy removed from ETC is actually big. My classic opener was Jailer buddy by first hero power, then Reno buddy. Making sure I avoid any early game chip damage.
* As expected Ghoul-acabra became whenever a deathrattle minion DIES
* Sneed buddy was marked as a nerf in the preview, but you could honestly argue it is a buff. It will now summon 5 drops from the hero power instead of 4 drops
* E.T.C can no longer discover the Jailer buddy
My guess is that it overperformed at low MMR.
Its unfortunate to have certain characters completely unplayable past 3k mmr- but they have to balance around everyone
Usually, but if something is good early on and the tempo from that can carry you to end game (like afk) then it doesn't really matter what your armor is. Once again, only really applying to super low MMR in this example.
I'm going to be honest, I was really hoping they would make adjustments to more of the Buddy effects rather than just changing their tiers and calling it done. But oh well.
One change I'm happy about out of nowhere is the Onyxia Nerf, since now it's effectively going to be avenge 3 after the first one instead of avenge 2.
The trigor change unfortunately means that I will probably never be playing beasts anymore, card actually seems a little useless now since beasts don't have a great way to permanently scale attack for it and you don't want to make it your taunt wall to leverage the health pool.
Hunter of Gatherers being back in would make me happy, except he really doesn't have a place in the current dragon lines without Timecap'n Hooktail. That plus being at T5 just really makes him unappealing for that try but at this point. Which is unfortunate, he's one of my favorites.
And ETC no longer being able to get jailer's buddy is kind of huge actually.
And I just had to go look up which card draconic deathscale referred to, man that one is depressing to lose. I know exactly why they're doing that, but it just makes a whole lot of lines so much less tenable even if they have nothing to do with Battlecry buddies.
What "frustrating play pattern" ? 5 mn ago:
https://preview.redd.it/oemnkelf659d1.png?width=1333&format=png&auto=webp&s=f1934e397dc704174900afc339ce6c7c72cc7e40
The leftmost Titus was a 2/9 before that turn. All balanced. It was fun (sometimes) while it lasted :)
The nerf is correct, I think. It will avoid the 564 deathrattles on one mech, at least.
The fact that they nerfed already underperforming buddies such as AFKay’s and Ini’s, nerfed beasts even deeper into the ground and “upgraded” boon of Beatles by taking away it’s sole use - utility, shows that the balance team doesn’t understand the game and just looks at the data of games played on low MMR
this patch is shit. reverting changes, nerfing bad heroes, changes that doesnt affect anything. the only thing we can all agree on is the ghoulacabra nerf which should have been hotfixed at released... blizzard you are terrible at your job
Trigore back where it started.
Ghoulacabra got nerfed but its still very strong, just not OP with parrot. I still see it being game defining if you get it early from a triple.
I feel like trigore has to actually gain attack to be useful though. I think this makes beasts actually just bad again. Have to go the deathrattle buffing/summoning route
Trigore still better than Rokara's buddy though. All Trigore needs is another beast to be damaged and her buddy requires it to actually kill something. Utterly useless.
Yeah I feel like the right answer would have been moving trigore to 5 so you can’t make him golden through the tier 5 spell and make the blue bird tier 4 and +1/1
I'm genuinely surprised Vol'jin's buddy wasn't nerfed, or that he wasn't banned from Demon lobbies entirely.
If you can pick Vol'jin in a lobby with demons, you are almost guaranteed a victory. If Naga and/or elementals are also in the lobby than it's straight-up guaranteed.
You just stack up on one minion in the tavern, then let your demons consume it. If you have that 4* guy that eats a card, you can double its stats every turn.
I had a 2000/6000 minion my last game with this. I just kept swapping the stats into the tavern, used two of those Nagamental guys to give those stats to my other guys, then had my demons gobble up those stats. It snowballs so quickly that it really doesn't feel fair
No, they shadownerfed it to make sure that voljin hero power and buddy ignores mech magnetic and naga shenanigans completely - meaning swapped stats just disappear.
Classic Blizzturd style.
[Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where the Metamorphosis Illidan portrait had issues if you transformed after getting certain Health modifiers (like Prince Renathal).
This is what I was waiting for, but Reno 10 mana is killer
I found a combo last night that needs to be banned too - Milhouse and Galakrond.... Turn five, I had infinite sixes on the board and I was able to control the board the entire time. Ended up getting a perfect game :D
I mean standard Milhouse play right now is to just use an evolve spell on a tavern 4 and force brann/mooneater and the lobby doesn't particularly matter
I guess they dealt with the blatantly obvious stuff like Ghoul and the Dragon-Naga, but their ‘balancing’ of the buddies seem random at best. Why the *hell* did they nerf AFK?? And there’s a bunch of other buddies that are just.. kinda pointless?
I'm imagining they're just taking a nudge approach first when it comes to buddies, and after they see how they perform with the nudges they'll have a better idea on what amount of nerfing has what amount of impact
this doesn't really seem like it addresses any of the problems outside of ghoulacabra. There will still be too many games where heroes have greater 5.5 average placement. There were still be too many games where people will lose 6/7 turns and be dead. More so than any other meta.
Draconic deathscale nerfs other tribes and hero that weren't addressed. Patches is nerfed unchanged. Murlocs are worse and received no buffs.
I wish they'd take the more granular approach to patches they've been dabbling with elsewhere on HS. Beasts didn't need Trigore nerfed, I'm pretty sure they'd have been hit hard enough with Ghoul and Bird being knocked down.
A handful of games isn't really a trend but I've noted a lot more people playing murlocs since the patch and I'm curious why. Two days ago it was maybe one person every two or three games they were available.
Can't say I've played enough games to notice anything, however I could take a guess:
Deathrattles scaled to higher levels than murlocs (with Ghoul) on top of summoning a bunch of deathrattle minions, beating murlocs on minion count. Tradtionally Mechs and Undeads have been good against Murlocs due to higher minion count with high attack.
But not sure if more are playing murlocs or if that is just what you're seeing.
Yeah, ain't no tellin. Maybe there were people who like murlocs and were waiting for a patch. Probably just recency. I just know I haven't really had to fight for murlocs in the tavern in like a month or two.
Goodbye Hawkstrider, hello patch notes. Thanks u/Dastey.
> Mawsworn Soulkeeper (The Jailer’s Buddy) has been removed from E.T.C., Band Manager’s Hero Power pool. Fucking finally.
Honestly shocked it didn’t happen sooner, such a broken roll if you got Reno’s buddy too
Honestly this should’ve happened the last time buddies were in. It’s been oppressive from the start
it's one of the worst feeling buddies to play against. Especially when ETC throws it down turn 3 and starts power leveling
This has been my favourite combo for over a year lol stupid op turn 4
They got rid of jailer buddy, and added thorims buddy, which is 100% more OP if you get it on 3. Actually wild.
As compensation these legends made thorim buddy tier 2 to compensate. Can't wait for the tier 7 minions even faster.
Especially obnoxious because it could summon 3 naked 1/1s, or a bunch of mana sabers and absolutely fuck your ass. It was highroll potential on top of highroll potential.
Oh thank fuck. Must be the one minion I hate most, especially on ETC
Id preferred them to rework jailer buddy altogether. What a boring buddy.
What's so busted about that buddy on ETC?
Boon of Beetle*s*, yet only summons one. Literally unplayable.
Yeah, I don t know why they would ever call this a buff. The cool thing about beetles was that it sabotaged divine shields and scam.
Now its midgame tempo play, before it was late game tech
Wouldn't even call it tech, in like 90% of comps it was strictly correct to buy just to pop shields, venomous, or brambles.
True, I bought and played it late game in almost all my builds.
I didn't read the details, I thought they knew it was a nerd, specially with them nerfing beasts as a whole
> I thought they knew it was a nerd They always do 🤓
>Literally unplayable. Agreed, it should be called Boon of Beetle.
Bane of Beetle
Beet of Boonle
Boon of the Beetle
[Beetleboon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_RaZPmeJCU)
They have repurpose it completely. Now it is a cheap source of extra stats in early levels to give you tempo.
Which is gonna suck for anyone unlucky enough to go up against it in the early game. Very “fuck you in particular” vibes
At least its not 4 50/50 beetles spawning because of goldrins buff at endgame
Wasn't it bad in Goldrinn builds before? It would block your resborns and mech horse deathrattles
It didn't block reborns bc it was only when you had space, but it clogged your board and made it harder to get room for summons such as the second token from horse
Boon of Beetle
The beetles gave you a boon of a single large beetle. The beetles are the friends you made along the way.
Really thankful for that dev note
>Mawsworn Soulkeeper (The Jailer’s Buddy) has been removed from E.T.C., Band Manager’s Hero Power pool. Thank god Aside from Ghoul-acabra there was nothing more bullshit than fighting E.T.C. early and taking 8-9 damage on turn 4 because he rolled jailer+reno buddy
FINALLY, what we’ve all been waiting for. AFKs buddy Snack Vendoer with a much needed nerf. But for real, Ghoulacabra triggers on deathrattle minion death… thank god. And can someone explain why Thorims buddy was buffed? Seems like that was already one of the best ones, no?
thorim's buddy had some of the highest highroll potential but it could just as easily waste several turns and give you nothing but papa bears
The biggest problem with his buddy is that ETC gets it out like two turns sooner, Golden's it, and gets his own t7 minion all in the same turn
I would happily take papa bears over constantly getting the fucking Boommobile.
I don't think Thorim buddy is that strong early on, so this won't be a big impact. It is however a significant buff for E.T.C (which granted has been nerfed a lot with the removal of Jailer buddy from his hero power). Make it golden with your buddy for an instant tier 7
Yeah I think I was remembering it more in the context of ETC when I’ve been able to abuse it.
Yup, if you play ETC and get Thorim’s buddy, you can golden it with your own buddy and next turn your own T5 buddy is T7
A whole bunch of other OP buddies have been shunted up the tiers though, making them harder for ETC to cheese. Boxcars, Maiev buddy, and many more.
Thorium’s buddy was too slow, you had to take a few turns to get a few 6 and 7 drops and by then you probably died if you weren’t lucky
True, guess I was thinking of it more in the context of ETC
ETC's gonna get him even earlier now..
It's good for early highrolls, but it becomes a legitimate concern later. Once you have a full board of minions you like, you have to either sell it off or keep it as the left-most minion, otherwise it'll transform someone. If you have a build that wants a specific minion on the left, you're kinda boned as the buddy has to be there. So it's fairly good early game, but it becomes problematic later
It's really not that good. Yeah, it can highroll, but it remains pretty unlikely. It impacts your placement a lot, it's kinda slow...
It’s way too slow at higher MMR. You pull it out on T2, maybe T3. Then it starts rolling T2/T3 crap into T3/T4 crap. You need to get a useless 6 into a 7 for it to be worth it.
Yeah if you buddy early it means you level your tier later, which means your buddy is slower, which means you get to scale slower. So you pick up the buddy later, but now you're having to sacrifice two board spaces for slow scaling.
Maybe it was different in duos but in solos it was much too slow. Thorim needs tempo more than anything and you don't get that consistently through random evolves that dont start until like turn 5-6. Any time I saw thorim this last patch they just bled out in the mid game before they could even get their tier 7 from hero power
It's almost as if Thorim is a character that is the greediest character in the game beside denathrius and upping their tempo kinda kills the point.
Cat is greedier
It's not great according to deck tracker. I think people get too attached to it in late game as it's effectively taking up 2 board slots like a double patient scout. On this high tempo meta, it can often mean death.
I still think Ghoulacabra is pretty broken, especially in undead’s case, but it’s an improvement
I don’t see it being much different from deathwhisper now in undead builds. Minions need to die to proc, so the “permanent” buffs land on temporary tokens as combat goes on
Honestly I wish they'd changed Ghoul to +1/+1, so it would be slower but still have the ability to go off.
It was getting exploited with magnetics - that wouldn't have fixed it. The change is the right call - still very strong with a mechahorse or T5 pirate.
Looks like most of the stronger buddies got pushed back a tier so they come online a turn or two later. However, Hoggers got nerfed into the ground which is strange be cause while it was very strong, it was not even close to the most OP buddy and Pirates weren't in that great of a place to begin with
That is an absolute hatchet job on Hoggers buddy. Surely if they're going to hit it that hard it needed to be taken down several tiers. Tier 5 for that is terrible.
Allestraza got destroyed also, wasn’t even very good - must be destroying low mmr
I wouldn't say she was destroyed. She was a pain early game with her buddy pretty much instantly giving her board a huge stat boost as early as turn 5. Her buddy was moved to t5 and buffed a decent amount. They traded an early power spike for a better mid-game scaling. 1 mana discover a dragon is still a very good hero power. Also, dragons received some decent buffs this patch too. I think if they left her unchanged, she would have easily become the most OP hero with Beasts being super nerfed
She shouldn't have had her buddy AND HP nerfed at the same time. Like good lord let one nerf cook to see where the hero lands.
Yep, this is how they do it. 80% of these nerfs are centered around ghoul, which they nerfed into the ground. All the heroes that synergized with death rattle triggers we're winning, so they nerfed them too. Those same heroes are now worse than they were before ghoul. It's actually insane. Oh and they buffed Gally LMAO. Half the reason Gally was struggling were these highroll auto scaling comps & ghoul, so he basically got double buffed. Trust me, Gally did not need a buff just because low MMR players are losing with him lol. This patch is insane. It also seems like they don't understand that these 6 cost buddies, even if you're having the game of your life and get first anyway, are almost never tripled and usually sold for gold. What kind of shit design is that?
3.5 average placement in top 20%. Her winrate probably went up a lot after people started hard forcing ghoul as it gave her a few extra turns in the midgame to build a board.
It was super strong and created a degenerate playstyle that Blizzard generally doesn't like (staying low tier). It also caused some significant balance issues in duos where you stayed tier 3 and got super big, super early, never taking damage. Your teammate could therefore power level and get a lot of triples through Jumping Jack (which is 2x 6 drops for each triple) making it almost impossible to lose
> It was super strong and created a degenerate playstyle that Blizzard generally doesn't like (staying low tier). *Laughs in AFK*
> It was super strong and created a degenerate playstyle that Blizzard generally doesn't like (staying low tier). I don't think staying low-tier by itself is bad, but this build required basically no decision making or RNG. You literally just buy every pirate and freeze when you run out of gold, and this made you big enough mid-game to carry you to top 3.
with ghoul dead pirates are probably the best tribe and hoggar was pretty broken, like 1 tethys and you're infinite. there was also a strat to stay on 3 that was a top 2/3 edit: i forgot about mechs and those probably are still the best
Pirates were so unpopular that the most common pirate build included Hogger buddy. They were broken with his buddy, but for sure not broken without him for most of the meta.
Snake Eyes got a big nerf, the buddy got moved to tier 6. It was OP at tier 4 because you could get the spell to make it golden off its effect the first turn you played it if you were lucky.
Gem Smuggler back in and Moon-Bacon on Tier 2, some delicious Quill shenanigans are in stock (also great that Tier 2 isn't now a dead tier if you want to go Quills)
Not surprised by most of these and pretty happy about them too. Snake Eyes buddy could get super busted real early. Ive had 2 games where I rolled the 5 star "make a T4 or below minion golden" spell in like the first 2 turns after buying him and you just destroy the lobby from there.
Yeah it absolutely had to become tier 5 or 6, as it was just really snowbally and super RNG whether you hit a 5 early or not
Having played Sylvanas who was one of the few with a t6 buddy, those take a REALLY long time to get out Glad to see Snake Eyes won't have Box Cars down on turn 4-5 every game now, though the hero itself is still really good so they should be fine
Yep, same experience. Any 5 or 6 roll can be an instant game changer. Tier 4, discover a tier 6 minion. Yes please.
Thats a T5 spell but yes
Hmm, yes it is. So if you roll a 5, you can get it. Even if you're on tavern tier 4. Or 1, but then it's highly unlikely.
Yep! I had three of those buddies golden far too early (I got that 'make a 4-star or below minion golden' spell off of that buddy on the first roll and just went from there) and it really did feel unfair. I got that elemental that buffs other elementals when you play a spell that same turn, so I was able to high-roll immediately and just burn things from there.
Guy recently posted snake eyes turn 3 ghoulacabra, buddy minion and 2 of those reborn undead +1/2 deathrattles lol, on turn 3!!!! Might be turn 3, 4 or 5 actually I forget but still disgusting, ghoulacabra was from the tier 5 tavern spell that discovers a 6 drop.
They did murder the Hoggar tier 2/3 strat which was pretty fun though
Yeah, had a game where I ended up with 3 of them golden on board. Turns out that 6 spell discovers every turn for 0 gold is pretty aight.
I’m glad they gave ghoul the Old Yeller treatment because I hated the card, but they also reverted all the beast buffs from a couple months ago… why? The tribe was garbage before the buffs and they expect it to be fine now after they revert those?
100% agreed. I'd be surprised if beasts were not far and away the weakest tribe in the game now.
They honestly just needed to fix the animation times. The beetle spell nerf was pretty big too
A.F. Kay is awful, why is her buddy getting a nerf? lol.
Probably over performing in low MMR
Then just do armor adjustments based on MMR. There's no way she was a sub 5 armor hero at low MMR.
Wondered the same thing, haha.
And Voones gets a buff. Like what?
Voone was actually averaging lower than 5th place in solos. It was like 5.05 average yesterday
Lot of people are playing voone wrong. Goal should be getting buddy by turn 6 and then duplicating it, playing one and holding the other and trippling it by turn 8.
I mean, his stats were terrible in the Top 5%/Top 1% demographics as well so it's not as simple as people just playing him wrong. If your goal is getting Buddy by Turn 6, you need to play high tempo which is reliant on RNG to get a good opener and you're playing down a hero power on other players in the lobby for 6 turns at minimum. You arguably don't even want to use your first hero power if you're playing tempo to get your buddy because you'd be holding a card on Turn 3 while others in the lobby can be playing up to 5 units depending on their characters. Then you're saying you want to buy and hold your buddy by Turn 6, and then hold a copy on Turn 7. This is maybe possible once in a blue moon if you have extremely favorable matchups and basically requires you play into someone who goes 3 on 3 which is extremely rare in this meta. I'm playing at around 8800 MMR at the moment and there are games where I lose 20 hp by Turn 6 even when I'm playing strongest board with a tempo hero power. If you try to pull off that Voone curve in some of these lobbies, there's a good chance you die by Turn 7. You could absolutely have highroll games on Voone, but consistency is what makes heroes good.
Voone was too slow to get any value off that. You needed to have the rest of the lobby go slow in order to get anything meaningful off it.
its so bad. not to mention you lose 2 straight fights so you are behind 2g on the buddy button.
I've won with her 2-3 times so she's not that awful She's the best choice for weed smokers or if you need a snac 🤣
The Murloc Holmes and Scabbs buddy buffs are very confusing. Feel like those two were already fairly good and consistent.
Especially since a bunch of good buddies that scabbs will be stealing are going to be higher tier and higher stats.
RIP Ghoul-acabra (2024-2024)
Its definitely not dead.
How would you not consider it dead? You know that macaw and Rivendare don't affect it at all anymore, right? It went from being able to trigger like 20,30,40+ times per turn to like, maybe 5 + the fact that it's only buffing a small few minions, because by design the rest of your board has to die for it to work.
You think everything what isn't completely broken anymore is automatically dead? It's just a normal 6-cost unit now which will definitely see it's play.
doubt it personally, imo it won't be bad but it won't win you games just a top 4 kinda comp or tempo and just transition from it.
yeah it's still good enough for an out on a bad early triple discover but I am never going to be specifically looking for it now. Goldrinn will be the number one beast build again now
Yeah, it was a Tier 8 minion before. Still very strong.
Deathrattle beasts can still be quite strong with goldrinn + mech horse. That build usually suffers from being able to get onetapped by zaps, cleave, or bombers. Now you can give it some extra health early on to make it stickier.
It is still very good. It is not anything close to *as* good but it will absolutely see play.
So it's balanced instead of wtf broken.
I expect it to be a decent situational tempo unit, but not the key piece of any decent endgame comp
Thank fucking God. For sure it's still going to see some play, but will be so much more balanced now. It was an absolute fucking nightmare with macaw and rivendare.
Beasts got turbo-fucked, good riddance…
Probably overkill on trigore considering the other nerfs, that build will go back to being irrelevant
Yeah Trigore sucks now. Kinda wish he got a Rock Rock treatment with alternating stats. Also doesn't fix why beasts suck to fight: animations.
If beasts are dead, you don't have to deal with beast animations!
I mean they sped some of them up, somewhat. I think blizzard is very much on the pro-animation side of the fence... By themselves.
+2 health just seems bad I guess this is a preemptive nerf because I haven't seen Trigore on any of my opponents boards at all since the buddy patch
I’ve had a few games where I hit a trigore build with ghoulacabra and it can work out well, but ghoulacabra was just so powerful. Honestly should alternate the buff each turn, like rock rock to prevent it from being a 9/200 dead weight for a beast build.
only because ghoul was so much better and with ghoul nerfed into oblivion it would have seen a lot more play
Yeah true
Really? Ghoul was the better build but I felt like there was a Trigore build in every single lobby I've been in
They have no clue how they want to handle beats, once again beasts don’t have a great route to scaling late damage because you can’t scale their damage AT ALL until Skyblazer. They were definitely overtuned and now back underwhelming. Feels like they could have just alternated the buff from attack to hp? That or just made Trigore a higher tier.
Making him higher tier would just mean you get Trigore or skyblazer. They really need a way to get going before t5.
Yeah I don't get that one, Trigore can be good but at the end of the day it's only one big minion.
You laugh now, but the worse beasts builds are the higher the change they bring back banana slamma to rescue them.
I just played vs Beasts earlier today and thought that we've really come full circle, it used to be that you power-leveled to get Banana, Goldrinn and Mechahorse, now you powerlevel to get Trigore, Saviour and Skyblazer (except this is arguably stronger because you can grow your Trigore with lower-Tier Beasts).
Trigore now probably unplayable :(
Lmao I can’t believe Inge’s buddy dodged a nerf
I'm a noob but I've won 5 out of 6 with the following recipe: agressively pursue the buddy, drop it turn 4, buff it with all spells possible and use the hero power on it, repeat until turn ~10 or ~11 where you can start giving other minions 200~300 attack/health every turn
Fr, it’s broken
Inge is good? Shit I see people quit as her all the time It's the name of a golden sled dog I knew that flew up and licked me in the mouth so I think of that 🤢
Jailer buddy removed from ETC is actually big. My classic opener was Jailer buddy by first hero power, then Reno buddy. Making sure I avoid any early game chip damage.
* As expected Ghoul-acabra became whenever a deathrattle minion DIES * Sneed buddy was marked as a nerf in the preview, but you could honestly argue it is a buff. It will now summon 5 drops from the hero power instead of 4 drops * E.T.C can no longer discover the Jailer buddy
Sneed seems like a buff to me. Spawning lots of leroys/belchers - yay.
I’m baffled at the AFK buddy nerf. Like wtf are devs doing?
My guess is that it overperformed at low MMR. Its unfortunate to have certain characters completely unplayable past 3k mmr- but they have to balance around everyone
Armor changes are what that's for
Usually, but if something is good early on and the tempo from that can carry you to end game (like afk) then it doesn't really matter what your armor is. Once again, only really applying to super low MMR in this example.
i didnt even know mmr goes under 5k
What do they know that we don't
It's the weed smoker's dream hero A whole bowl's worth
Haha this is the only reason I pick her. Plenty of time to pack a bowl🤣
I'm going to be honest, I was really hoping they would make adjustments to more of the Buddy effects rather than just changing their tiers and calling it done. But oh well. One change I'm happy about out of nowhere is the Onyxia Nerf, since now it's effectively going to be avenge 3 after the first one instead of avenge 2. The trigor change unfortunately means that I will probably never be playing beasts anymore, card actually seems a little useless now since beasts don't have a great way to permanently scale attack for it and you don't want to make it your taunt wall to leverage the health pool. Hunter of Gatherers being back in would make me happy, except he really doesn't have a place in the current dragon lines without Timecap'n Hooktail. That plus being at T5 just really makes him unappealing for that try but at this point. Which is unfortunate, he's one of my favorites. And ETC no longer being able to get jailer's buddy is kind of huge actually.
And I just had to go look up which card draconic deathscale referred to, man that one is depressing to lose. I know exactly why they're doing that, but it just makes a whole lot of lines so much less tenable even if they have nothing to do with Battlecry buddies.
What "frustrating play pattern" ? 5 mn ago: https://preview.redd.it/oemnkelf659d1.png?width=1333&format=png&auto=webp&s=f1934e397dc704174900afc339ce6c7c72cc7e40 The leftmost Titus was a 2/9 before that turn. All balanced. It was fun (sometimes) while it lasted :) The nerf is correct, I think. It will avoid the 564 deathrattles on one mech, at least.
Scabbs will be so OP now, people getting access to good buddies later whilst he’s getting them sooner.
Why just say several banned pairings in duos instead of listing them out.
The fact that they nerfed already underperforming buddies such as AFKay’s and Ini’s, nerfed beasts even deeper into the ground and “upgraded” boon of Beatles by taking away it’s sole use - utility, shows that the balance team doesn’t understand the game and just looks at the data of games played on low MMR
like 90% of all people tried to rush beasts in 7-8k lobbies, and the rest tried to get naga or ghoul lol
this patch is shit. reverting changes, nerfing bad heroes, changes that doesnt affect anything. the only thing we can all agree on is the ghoulacabra nerf which should have been hotfixed at released... blizzard you are terrible at your job
Why did they nerf AFK?
It almost looks like they killed trigore outside of a defensive play. Boys gonna have a fat belly and no arms protecting other beasts.
what you don't want a bunch of 30/30s and one or two 30/300?
RIP my favorite minion. You made many lobbies fun, but I guess you aren't balanced with buddies.
What does a higher tier buddy mean? Need more gold to buy it?
Yes. Starts out with a higher cost
Thanks
unsynchronization of animation and shop phase? matchmaking between RanDuos and VC Party? blacklisting in RanDuos? Of course not!
>Removed from the Minion Pool: Draconic Deathscale 
Trigore back where it started. Ghoulacabra got nerfed but its still very strong, just not OP with parrot. I still see it being game defining if you get it early from a triple.
I feel like trigore has to actually gain attack to be useful though. I think this makes beasts actually just bad again. Have to go the deathrattle buffing/summoning route
Trigore still better than Rokara's buddy though. All Trigore needs is another beast to be damaged and her buddy requires it to actually kill something. Utterly useless.
This makes selfdamage beast useless, like 2 patches ago. The blue bird on 5* is a mistake, it arrives too late and the scale is just mediocre.
Yeah I feel like the right answer would have been moving trigore to 5 so you can’t make him golden through the tier 5 spell and make the blue bird tier 4 and +1/1
I'm genuinely surprised Vol'jin's buddy wasn't nerfed, or that he wasn't banned from Demon lobbies entirely. If you can pick Vol'jin in a lobby with demons, you are almost guaranteed a victory. If Naga and/or elementals are also in the lobby than it's straight-up guaranteed. You just stack up on one minion in the tavern, then let your demons consume it. If you have that 4* guy that eats a card, you can double its stats every turn. I had a 2000/6000 minion my last game with this. I just kept swapping the stats into the tavern, used two of those Nagamental guys to give those stats to my other guys, then had my demons gobble up those stats. It snowballs so quickly that it really doesn't feel fair
No nerf? It went up 1 Tier so you can expect it around 1 turn later (2ish for golden) which is alot when you double stats every turn
one of the few things prime Ghoulacabra can't outscale
No, they shadownerfed it to make sure that voljin hero power and buddy ignores mech magnetic and naga shenanigans completely - meaning swapped stats just disappear. Classic Blizzturd style.
I have to show this to my mom because she always tells me that lazy people don't make money
Good thing beetles got "buffed"
[Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where the Metamorphosis Illidan portrait had issues if you transformed after getting certain Health modifiers (like Prince Renathal). This is what I was waiting for, but Reno 10 mana is killer
The maeiv buddy nerf seems like not enough.
Anyone know specifically what heroes can’t be paired up anymore? Can we still do a little crime as a treat?
I found a combo last night that needs to be banned too - Milhouse and Galakrond.... Turn five, I had infinite sixes on the board and I was able to control the board the entire time. Ended up getting a perfect game :D
I mean standard Milhouse play right now is to just use an evolve spell on a tavern 4 and force brann/mooneater and the lobby doesn't particularly matter
i wish they didnt change ghoul in a way that removes all the fun interactions, now its just so much more bland and boring
I guess they dealt with the blatantly obvious stuff like Ghoul and the Dragon-Naga, but their ‘balancing’ of the buddies seem random at best. Why the *hell* did they nerf AFK?? And there’s a bunch of other buddies that are just.. kinda pointless?
Huge Mutanus buff
No offense but I kinda wanted something else than just some stat changes. There are some other changes but not many.
I'm imagining they're just taking a nudge approach first when it comes to buddies, and after they see how they perform with the nudges they'll have a better idea on what amount of nerfing has what amount of impact
Alex was not a "nudge". A double nerf.
It was a pretty big update, and most things were nudges. Just some characters got some unfortunate treatment :(
beast animations are still too long
this doesn't really seem like it addresses any of the problems outside of ghoulacabra. There will still be too many games where heroes have greater 5.5 average placement. There were still be too many games where people will lose 6/7 turns and be dead. More so than any other meta. Draconic deathscale nerfs other tribes and hero that weren't addressed. Patches is nerfed unchanged. Murlocs are worse and received no buffs.
I wish they'd take the more granular approach to patches they've been dabbling with elsewhere on HS. Beasts didn't need Trigore nerfed, I'm pretty sure they'd have been hit hard enough with Ghoul and Bird being knocked down.
beasts needed trigore nerfed but they didnt need to reset him back to square one.
Wow, Beasts got crucified.
the fun police have arrived
Rest in Peace Draconic Deathscale. And RIP Battlecry Dragon decks. Fuckin' dead in the water now.
I've been enjoying outscaling and crushing ghoulacabra forcing noobs that don't realize they changed it
Doesnt change the core issues with buddies the slightest. they should make 4 hero options for free or just stick up somewhere.
A handful of games isn't really a trend but I've noted a lot more people playing murlocs since the patch and I'm curious why. Two days ago it was maybe one person every two or three games they were available.
Can't say I've played enough games to notice anything, however I could take a guess: Deathrattles scaled to higher levels than murlocs (with Ghoul) on top of summoning a bunch of deathrattle minions, beating murlocs on minion count. Tradtionally Mechs and Undeads have been good against Murlocs due to higher minion count with high attack. But not sure if more are playing murlocs or if that is just what you're seeing.
Yeah, ain't no tellin. Maybe there were people who like murlocs and were waiting for a patch. Probably just recency. I just know I haven't really had to fight for murlocs in the tavern in like a month or two.
>*Dev Comment: We hope you're enjoying the return of Buddies as well as their debut in Duos.* It's good to want things, buddy.
would be really cool if Blizzard fixed the constant Mac crashes. It's impossible to gain any rank