I feel like, prior to 9.0, the game was in a very good and balanced state, with the only exception being some necessary buffs/changes to NR (and I believe a lot of you agree with me). I feel like not only the cards but also the introduction of a series of unreasonable changes threw the game off the rails.
Take Larva, for instance: while it was a massive buff to Koshchey and Thrive decks, it also severely limited the options for most other MO decks, since it was by far the most reliable engine that faction had. With the nerf to the Piggies, soon MO will cease to have reliable good 4p cards; hell, Elder Bear will simply be a better Noonwraith! (The Piggies definitely deserved that nerf, but at least they should give us better 4p options for MO decks). The same can be said for ST Sage, that got a massive unreasonable nerf.
And then there are the bizarre new cards. I get that they are just a third of the expansion, but they feel so unnecessarily weird to play because of the lack of overall support. Why not expand on previous less touched upon archetypes more and try to make them more viable instead of introducing new keywords that aren't simply necessary for the game to be fun right now? They tried to make SK weather a thing, but it failed due to the lack of overall support; ST introduced cards that would be great in a no unit deck if Francesca wasn't so susceptible, Vanadáin wasn't trash and Sage didn't get obliterated (and no unit ST was already viable, so why not support Harmony instead?); NG went for hypethin when people already hate clog and some Aristocrat and Soldiers support would have been much more interesting.
Overall, I think that the much smaller and less "revolutionary" addition of the leader cards in the beginning of the year was much more interesting and balanced than this expansion and I believe that, since they went for a three part expansion, they should have focused more on something similar.
TLDR: 9.0 should have been more like the first "mini-expansion" we got this year.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/gwent/comments/oe7ay9/the_unstable_state_of_gwent/
