Loads of balance changes across three of Hearthstone's game modes are due to arrive on the hour in a client-side patch. Here are all the changes!
Constructed Updates
Quote From Blizzard Dev Comment: Overall, this is a little bit of a lighter patch for Standard. We just had a big infusion of cards with the mini-set, so this patch is just looking to address two major outliers after that card infusion. We’re excited to see where the mini-set lands after these adjustments.
For Wild, we’ve been discussing potential updates to the mode. In this patch, we’re making changes to help curb some of the mode’s negative play experiences. We don’t view these changes as exhaustive, but we are working on some more long-term updates that we’re excited to share once they are more solidified.
Construct Quarter
- Old: [3 Mana]
- New: [4 Mana]
Dev Comment: Frost Death Knight is the best deck in Standard after the mini-set and Construct Quarter is the stand-out card in that deck and in other Death Knight decks. This change is both an acknowledgment of the strongest deck in the format and the strongest card in that deck.
Goldshire Gnoll
- Old: [10 Mana]
- New: [11 Mana]
Dev Comment: Before the rise of Frost Death Knight, Evolve Shaman was the biggest outlier in the format. This change is to keep Evolve Shaman in line after the adjustment to Construct Quarter. Goldshire Gnoll is an important enabler for the deck’s bad play patterns, and this makes those play patterns slower and less powerful, while still allowing Evolve Shaman to play with the exciting new cards they got in the mini-set.
Grey Sage Parrot
- Old: Battlecry: Repeat the last spell you’ve cast that costs (5) or more.
- New: Battlecry: Repeat the last spell you’ve cast that costs (6) or more.
Spectral Pillager
- Old: [6 Mana] Combo: Deal damage equal to the number of other cards you’ve played this turn.
- New: [5 Mana] Combo: Deal 2 damage to a minion for each other card you’ve played this turn.
Cataclysm
- Old: [4 Mana] Destroy all minions. Discard your hand.
- New: [5 Mana] Destroy all minions. Discard 2 cards.
The above cards will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks following Patch 25.4.3.
Battlegrounds Updates
Quote From Blizzard Minion Pool Changes
- Sin’dorei Straight Shot will now only appear in games with Undead.
- Archdruid Hamuul has been temporarily returned to the minion pool (just until Patch 25.6).
Ghoul of the Feast
- Old: 2 Attack, 4 Health. Avenge (1): Give a friendly minion of each minion type +2 Attack.
- New: 2 Attack, 5 Health. Avenge (2): Give a friendly minion of each minion type +3 Attack.
Legion Overseer
- Old: 4 Attack, 4 Health.
- New: 4 Attack, 2 Health.
Chronormu
- Old: [Tavern Tier 4] 4 Attack, 4 Health.
- New: [Tavern Tier 5] 6 Attack, 6 Health.
Magmaloc
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health.
- New: 1 Attack, 1 Health.
Vanessa VanCleef
- Old: 3 Attack, 7 Health.
- New: 3 Attack, 4 Health.
Jelly Belly
- Old: 3 Attack, 5 Health.
- New: 3 Attack, 6 Health.
Groundshaker
- Old: 2 Attack, 6 Health.
- New: 3 Attack, 8 Health.
Felstomper
- Old: 3 Attack, 8 Health. After you summon a minion in combat, give your minions +2 Attack.
- New: 3 Attack, 7 Health. After you summon a minion in combat, give your minions +3 Attack.
Grease Bot
- Old: [Tavern Tier 6] 4 Attack, 7 Health. After a friendly minion loses Divine Shield, give it +3/+2 permanently.
- New: [Tavern Tier 4] 3 Attack, 6 Health. After a friendly minion loses Divine Shield, give it +2/+1 permanently.
Duels Updates
Quote From Blizzard Ghoul Blitz
- Old: Summon a 1/1 Ghoul with Charge and Reborn. It dies at end of turn.
- New: Summon a 2/1 Ghoul with Charge. It dies at end of turn.
Arcane Craftiness
- Old: [2 Mana]
- New: [3 Mana]
Scourging
- Old: [1 Mana]
- New: [2 Mana]
Call of Madness
- Old: [1 Mana] Summon a 0/1 Voidfiend.
- New: [2 Mana] Summon a 0/2 Voidfiend.
Shadow Mend
- Old: Restore 3 Health to a character. If it is still damaged, draw a card.
- New: Restore 2 Health to a character. If it is still damaged, draw a card.
Bruising
- Old: [1 Mana]
- New: [0 Mana]
No Guts, No Glory
- Old: [2 Mana]
- New: [1 Mana]
Warmaster’s Frenzy
- Old: [2 Mana]
- New: [1 Mana]
Signature Treasure Updates
Gluth
- Old: [4 Mana]
- New: [5 Mana]
Deathstrider
- Old: [4 Mana]
- New: [3 Mana]
Bonecrusher
- Old: [8 Mana]
- New: [6 Mana]
Carrot on a Stick
- Old: [3 Mana] 2 Attack, 3 Durability
- New: [2 Mana] 1 Attack, 3 Durability
Stalking Pride
- Old: [5 Mana]
- New: [4 Mana]
Wand of Dueling
- Old: 3 Durability
- New: 5 Durability
Fractured Spirits
- Old: [4 Mana] Silence a minion. Then summon 2 copies of it.
- New: [6 Mana] Summon 2 copies of a minion, then Silence it.
Shadow Word: Void
- Old: [5 Mana] Destroy a minion and summon 0/1 Voidfiends equal to its Health.
- New: [4 Mana] Destroy a minion and summon 0/2 Voidfiends equal to half its Health, rounded up.
Demonology 101
- Old: [7 Mana]
- New: [6 Mana]
Gift of the Heart
- Old: [6 Mana]
- New: [5 Mana]
Treasure Pool Updates
- “Be Our Guest” has been removed from Treasure Pool 1.
Bug Fixes
Quote From Blizzard
- [Hearthstone] Updated Hawkstrider Rancher’s text to say “Whenever” instead of “After.” This is a text-only change to make the text match how the card currently functions.
- [Hearthstone] Added the “Mech” tag to The Purator.
- [Duels] Fixed a bug where Ironweave Bloodletter would heal whenever either player spent Corpses.
- [Collection] Removed reference to Diamond Zephrys from Achievements. He will return—and be able to be earned—once he’s ready.
Comments
Well, I wasn't expecting team5 to completely obliterate the two cards from wild.
Spectral Pillager is so terrible now its almost like a joke card. Might as well just gave it the warsong treatment, because in what world is this a card anyone would be playing? Couldve made it 3 mana to at least make it playable, but I think we all know that the plan is simply to nuke it, not otherwise.
Cataclysm is more reasonable a change, because its not strictly bad, and can still fit into discolock, assuming that deck even needs it. They wanted mechacthun off warlock's list and this change properly does that.
As for standard,
Construct Quarter is well dealt with, because I tested DK and found this card terrible on mulligan. Just too slow now for aggro. I dare say it might still be good enough in blood decks, but I wouldn't bet on it. Egg on 1 into coin this is no longer possible at least.
Goldshire Gnoll nerf is more a nerf to shaman decks, and as a result I dont foresee evolve shaman even being relevant again until the next set of support cards printed for it. Blazing Transmutation just came out a couple of weeks ago and now its completely dead. Is there any reason why this card was printed again?
That said, shaman can still make a comeback via big shaman. Its not great, but its not giga trash neither. More like tier 2-3, and given a good hand can still easy scam games via neptulon-voljin. With more work, it might even be consistently tier 2. We'll have to see.
Without a shadow of a doubt the biggest winners here is paladin. Frost aggro DK takes tempo so well paladin got completely wiped out so no surprise its coming back. I think 70% of all my games recently is just pure or control pure pally.
Shaggro priest is actually pretty decent and might actually be tier 1, depending on how aggro the meta will be.
Warrior? Dont bother, still dead. Far as Im aware there's some concerted effort to make quest warrior good again, but at some point we'll probably just come right back to enrage all over again. Ironically, warrior's best matchup is into frost DK but that's taken down a peg now so Garrosh can go right back into warming benches for another month, when the new expansion comes in. Fingers crossed warrior wont be screwed for the third time in a row.
Read the section on warrior, there might be hope
Rest of the images: https://twitter.com/imik_plays/status/1631123436817862656/photo/1
Control warrior's biggest problem right now is not win cons, its speed. Its dreadfully slow, much more so than every other class at the moment. Even pally and priest draw faster than warrior and are better at dealing with boards. I have a feeling that part of the reason for that is that the cards are designed with pre-nerfed From the Depths in mind and they didn't want to revert it back.
Either they slow every class down (which can be possible given that rotation is next) or they give warrior better card draw and cheaper sustain cards.
From the notes, it might be that they're looking at bringing Battle Rage back to standard, and some of the cards that made that card great. Whatever it is, just hope they dont bring back bomb warrior.
I hated playing vs pilllager, but card got warsonged So cant exactly call that a good or amazing nerf
Its now a super crappy version of prize plunder , or crappy flik/vilespine/bootstrap.
Cataclysm is actully playable in non discard decks now, and parrot is also still usable
So really wish this was like 3 mana 3/3 for the reworked/changed effect,would fit with other 2 being vs Being warsonged.
I do want wild to get more changes, but i do not hope to see other cards get warsong treatment (after say dont want to/intent to kill decks, yet do a warsong lvl nuke and be forever deleted from excisting just like patron back in day with warsong commander.
Just hope this doesnt set a bad presidence for other stuff in wild being warsonge esqpcially when nerf can be made and have card/deck stilll be functioable but weaker
Not a Wild player, but man, we haven't seen nerfs this aggressive in a while.
Gnoll nerf seems a tad unfair. THe card was balanced by itself and they could have changed it so it now counts itself as a card in hand so it's functionally the same for every scenario outside of evolving.
The Construct Quarter nerf is also surprising. I was sure they were going to just shave off one durability and call it a day, but I guess this eliminates it from being a tempo crusher and instead keeps it as a defensive powerhouse.
So evolve shaman has to get rid of Goldshire Gnoll ... it will evolve to himself and any other 10 mana will evolve in him ...
truly he is the pinnacle of evolution.
Darwin in shambles
I don't think I've ever laughed this hard at patch notes, for any game, ever. I expected disappointment as they give Parrot, Pillager and Cataclysm a mild slap on the wrist as they tend to do, and they fucking ANNIHILATED them. Pillager in particular has just evaporated from every card collection on the planet cause who'd play that pile of crap now? Honestly, I'd have probably preferred a hit to Scabbs Cutterbutter cause I don't see the Spirit of the Shark + Scabbs interaction leading to anything good in the future, but I guess for now this utter deletion will suffice. As for Parrot, I think that's a great change. It will work just fine for some fun Big Spell Mage shenanigans and there's still hope for Quest Mage to at least be playable in some form with Giants like it was before Parrot's introduction. There are still ways to get some mileage out of Time Warp through Archmage Vargoth or Queen Azshara, and the ways to complete the quest are still as lightning-fast as before, so I'm sure Quest Mage enthusiasts will still find a way to make that deck operate in some capacity at, say, tier 3 or 4. Cataclysm nerf is actually quite elegant, cause the card itself is considerably more playable outside of discard now, and some forms of discard miiight still consider playing it, it'll just have to be a wholly different deck now, which is good. Also the shift to 5 mana wrecks Expired Merchant consistency on Soul Barrage so the deck will simply have no choice but to play fair, for now. The deck might just shift to a more board-centric version with Tiny Knight of Evil, and will obviously drop down the tiers like a brick, but it might not become strictly unplayable.
Now one card that I would definitely have liked to see nerfed is Illuminate cause...I'm still not sure how they thought they could get away with printing that card. As a reminder for the old timers, there was a time, a quite long stretch of time in fact, when Innervate used to give 2 mana crystals. It was busted, it got nerfed. We had Lightning Bloom, which was old Innervate but came at the cost of overload. It was kinda busted, it got removed from the game (no, Lightning Bloom does not exist, you can't convince me otherwise). Illuminate is BETTER unnerfed Innervate for spells. Not just better current Innervate for spells, better UNNERFED Innervate. How is it ok for Priests to play Shadow Essence for 3 mana? How is it ok for them to play Idol of Y'Shaarj on turn 4 (after a Palm Reading, which itself is also kinda busted). Priest is not the ramp class and they're cheating mana faster than Druids are in the early game! To compare, if Shadow Essence was in Druid, the Druid would have to play 2 Innervates to get it down a turn later than Priest, or would have to play a Biology Project AND an Innervate to play it on the same turn as Priest, except Priest isn't ramping the opponent in the process and isn't spending an extra card doing it. If Res Priest had to wait till turn 5 to get their Shadow Essence, it'd be pretty damn annoying for anything that isn't aggro or OTK. If they're playing it on 3, sometimes even 2, they just creating non-games for every deck in the game. The brokenness of Neptulon the Tidehunter, Shadow Essence, the whole res mechanic, that's one thing and a more complex issue to address. But how has Illuminate not been touched at all if they're trying to fix Wild play patterns?
Please correct me if I'm wrong as I don't play wild that much but do dabble from time to time. Big Priest is a Tier 2 deck right? (Might be Tier 1 now after the nerfs) and maybe Team 5 were worried about nerfing Illuminate as it'd affect Standard and Priest isn't looking too good in Standard atm (But ofc compared to Warrior, that's a different story 😅)
The Parrot nerf is kinda what I'm comparing to, it has no affect to BSM in Standard but ofc the nerf was to destroy the Quest mage combo.
They could always nerf it in the future after reevaluating the wild meta shift after these nerfs.
It is somewhere around tier 2, yeah. The issue isn't really that much in its power rating but more its popularity and its play pattern. Play pattern in particular is something they've nerfed even average decks for and Res Priest is just absolutely toxic in that regard, has been for quite a while now and yet hasn't been touched at all. It is also EVERYWHERE. I'm not at the tippity top of MMR but I get legend every month and usually I hit legend at around the 300-600 range (and then plummet as I play fun decks after the climb). So the meta I see isn't the most cutthroat and optimised to perfection, but still extremely competitive. In my laddering last month, I've met exactly 2 Quest Mages in all, and that deck got nerfed. Meanwhile, 25 % of my matchups were Res Priests. They camp at Diamond 5-3, they camp at mid-legend. If you're climbing you have to accept the fact 25 % of your games will be decided entirely by how hard the Priest will highroll you, cause there's nothing you can do to stop that. They either just fold cause they drew bad or you explode by turn 5. And the latter happens a lot more often due to their tutoring consistency.
Construct Quarter can now be used in WILD even DK :) another oppressive deck !
Because they never consider the consequences, or on purpose.
Personal opinions on these nerfs:
Grey Sage Parrot: Great nerf for Wild, and this nerf shouldn't affect standard Big spell mage. For standard players wondering why this got nerfed: Time Warp.
Spectral Pillager: Amazing nerf, it felt horrible to die to this card. Glad that turn 5-ish OTK from hand deck is gone.
Cataclysm: I'm feeling mixed about this nerf. This is a big nerf for discardlock and that deck probably needs to go back to a more minion based strategy instead of "Cataclysm and Nuke their FACE and fill the board for 4 mana." which is a good thing i.m.o... However this does hurt Mecha'thun decks a LOT, because now they actually need to empty their hand. It's unfortunate that Mecha'thun decks have to suffer because of discardlocks sins.
Goldshire Gnoll: Great nerf, Evolve shaman was already a good deck before the mini-set and now evolve shaman lost it's turn 2-3 (basically) insta-win combo, and whenever you evolve a 10 cost card in standard it will evolve into a Goldshire Gnoll. Personally i hope they wont revert this nerf when this rotates, otherwise this card will just be a ticking time-bomb.
Construct Quarter: i LOVE DK, but it really needs to be dialed down. This location was way to good, but i feel like it's still good enough even at 4 mana. And lets be honest, nerfing the durability wouldn't have affected the card at all.. And if they changed the stats they would have to offer a dust refund for Dark Transformation as well. So a mana cost increase was to be expected.
Overall, i like these changes. It's unfortunate that Mecha'thun warlocks got nerfed because of discardlock, but this change was needed. I do wish Big Priest was adressed as well, but overall these changes are a good first step and i hope wild will continue to get support. (Even if it's just a monthly patch or something, instead of like 1-2 per year.)
Yeah, yeah, they should change it to 12, so we have a new Mountain Giant
Wow, completely deleting Pillager Rogue and Quest Mage... this was unexpected for me.
Discard Warlock should be way less good now, but should still be "playable" - maybe with a more minion heavy build again.
Sadly no nerf to Big Priest again. Yeah, yeah, I know Big Priest is no top deck at the moment - but still the most frustrating deck (for me) to play against if it highrolls.
Here's what I understand: Goldshire Gnoll is now the only 11 cost minion in standard, so any time you evolve a 10 cost minion, you'll get this guaranteed. Is that right?
What is the Grey Sage Parrot nerf supposed to do? What 5 mana spell is being blocked here?
I like the Construct Quarter nerf. No opinion on the other 2, as I don't play wild.
Quest mage time warp and both 10 drops and gnoll worthlessly evolve into gnolls, irrespectively.
The Grey Sage Parrot change is a nerf to Open the Waygate, as I understand it.
Time Warp. Quest mage in wild is the reason why Grey Sage Parrot got nerfed. Standard Big Spell Mage shouldn't be affected by this nerf.
The mage quest reward spell.