Hearthstone Update 10.2 Crushes Corridor Creeper, Patches, Raza
Patches is no longer in charge.
Hearthstone Game Director Ben Brode threatened promised some balance changes for Hearthstone, following what proved to be an exciting World Championship. That time is apparently here with Update 10.2 and it wrecks a handful of the cards currently terrorizing the meta. And I mean, it wrecks them!
Here are some of the big changes coming for February's patch, taken from the Battle.net post:
- Bonemare: Now costs 8 mana. (Up from 7)
- Corridor Creeper: Now has 2 Attack. (Down from 5)
- Patches the Pirate: No longer has Charge
- Raza the Chained: Now reads: "Battlecry: If your deck has no duplicates, your Hero Power costs (1) this game."
On the one hand, the impact to the Standard meta will be minimal, since half of these cards are going to Wild with March's set rotation. However, some of these nerfs are incredibly devastating and actually make these cards completely unviable. But that's a story for later. Stay tuned, as a longer-form analysis is forthcoming.
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Ozzie Mejia posted a new article, Hearthstone Update 10.2 Crushes Corridor Creeper, Patches, Raza
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Okay raza priest no longer can otk now. So the velen mind blast stuff is gone. It might still be like a tier 3 deck that focuses more on long term value, but yeah it’s not going to dominate tournaments and ladder like it used to.
Creeper might still be playable if your deck can use the beast tag. Just kidding, the card is super dead.
Same with patches. The point of patches is it clears your opponents early minions so it’s pretty bad without charge.
Murluc paladin is still going to be nuts. Warlock is looking real good, both cubelock and control. We might even see miracle rogue make a return. -
Quick Analysis now that I had some time to digest the changes:
1) Raza priest is dead. Most of my wins with that deck were 24-40 OTK damage combo's with Veleen + Mindblast etc. and this is no longer possible.
2) Aggro as a whole takes a HUGE hit with the nerf to patches and creeper. Creeper is essentially 400 dust for everyone, it will no longer see any play in Standard. I could still see aggro druid utilize Patches due to the use of Mark of the Wild + Power of the Wild but other then that, I don't think decks like Tempo Rogue and aggro paladin will survive the new meta.
3) Decks like secret mage and murloc paladin only get hit by creeper nerf, but it turns out that creeper is pretty essential in games vs. Cubelock. I am curious how these decks perform after the patch.
4) We will see a huge shift to Cubelock/Control Warlock right after the nerf. This could mean we may start seeing Ooze tech for mirror matches or in general to stop the Doomguard/Cube combo.
5) Doomguard may certainly be ready to be Hall of Famed in April since they did not touch any Warlock cards with the nerfs. It will really depend on how the next 3-4 weeks go after the patch to see how oppressing warlocks become.
6) Decks like Big Priest, Jade Druid and Quest Mage will see an increase in play. They will tech against control Warlock most likely. The game is about to slow down a bunch until April's rotation.-
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I’m actually excited to see more variety of rogue decks. Cubelock doesn’t respond to sap/vanish very well. And one things of the things that held miracle/mill rogue back was poor matchups against aggro which are mostly getting nerfed.
I don’t think murluc paladin got hit very hard and that’s basically an aggro deck. That deck doesn’t need to run patches and I don’t see losing creeper as the end of the world. -
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