Hearthstone Senior Game Designer, Alec Dawson, has confirmed on Twitter that we were supposed to get a balance patch this week and it has been delayed.
Blizzard ran into issues with the patch and because they want to make sure Patch 20.0 has a smooth launch, it has been delayed. Instead, we'll see the balance changes, which have not yet been announced, arrive alongside the 20.0 patch which will bring Forged in the Barrens to the live servers. Alec does mention that they're happy with the meta right now but would have liked to make a balance change with regards to some burst damage. Read on for his full tweets.
Quote From Alec Dawson Strongly hinted at it, so want to get this out there. We had originally planned on doing a small balance patch this week, but we ran into some issues affecting our timeline. 20.0 is our largest patch to date (Barrens, Core, Classic) and want to make sure it's a smooth launch.
That balance change will go into the 20.0 patch later this month. Overall, we're fairly happy with the current meta but saw an opportunity to shore up some gameplay feelings related to burst damage. Looking forward to MT Ironforge, best of luck to everyone participating!
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Comments
I know Blizzard staff have been working from home for nearly a year now, but I'm impressed at how much they've been able to keep up the pace of releases and updates. I'm a bit concerned that a change of this size is going to introduce a lot of bugs - and given that they've delayed now it seems that's on their minds, too. I hope the people running this aren't under too great a pressure/crunch at this point.
But even if there are problems, the Hearthstone team have become so much more responsive to fixing things quickly, putting out patches and communicating with the community, that you know things will be fixed - even if not immediately - and that's a big plus compared with the old days.
It's likely also worthwhile recognising that the team is much bigger than in the olden days - when Celestalon was a guest on the Angry Chicken 400 podcast, he mentioned there are over 120 folks assigned to HS. There were about 70 when Brode left. They can do more stuff, more often, because Blizz has given them the human resources necessary to do the work.
If the update includes FitB expansion cards, could it also be datamined? And maybe skip card reveal schedule? What are they thinking..
The update they intended for this week would have only changed a few cards and nothing else (except perhaps a couple of minor bug fixes). The 20.0 patch will most definitely include FitB cards (that why it's not 19.X like this week's would have been), and we'll only get it after the cards are all revealed.
Reading between the lines. My guess is they did not have the testing bandwidth to both test the 20.0 patch and a smaller patch now.
In my opinion, adding more to the 20.0 patch is a lot less work to test then having to test both a smaller patch and the 20.0 patch.
Kind of a bummer the patch didn't launch today, then the guys who data mine could look into the next tavern pass along with the cosmetic awards and future plans, also
Sure, there's a lot of Rogue at the moment, but I'll take that over a Control Warrior dominated meta anytime.
Of course, set rotation is going to cure a multitude of ills, so it seems a bit strange that they'd even bother doing nerfs at the same time as the big update. Then again, very few cards in the Self-Sharpening deck are going away, so maybe it is necessary.
I would also like to point out that Paladin is still at the top of the chart, and its win rates are just as high as Rogue's.
Sap, evis and deckhand are all going away. Thats a pretty big deal.
I did say "very few," not "none." Of those three cards, only Deckhand has weapon synergy, and it's not even present in every version of the deck. Nor is Sap, for that matter. Just goes to show that they are not as big a deal as you seem to think.
Evis is a big blow to literally every single Rogue deck, but all classes (except Paladin) are facing similar losses, so that may just balance out as a separate issue.
The wording confirms that Forged in the Barrens is launching this month. I suppose we already figured that, but it's nice to know it for sure.
We already did know for sure. It comes out march 22nd or 23rd someone found the last day to pre order was the 22nd.
Gotta be 23rd. Launch days are always Tuesday or Thursday.
By the way, we've got 3 weeks left and seen 0 card reveals since Blizzcon. Isn't that weird?
only thing i think is weird we dont have any date yet when reveals will start, not that done have any reveals outside blizzcon.
Not really. The last few reveal periods lasted 2-3 weeks. We should be getting something this week, at the beginning of next week at the latest.
Largest patch to date, eh? Do you even have phones? :p Prepare your data plans ppl!
Thats going to be Nitroboost probably
One can hope. Unfortunately that does mean we have to deal with 2-3 more weeks of Nitroboost Rogue plaguing the ladder.
It feels shitty to lose to, but there have been worse decks left unchecked imo.
Yeah, most likely.