Blizzard has announced patch 27.6.2 will launch this Thursday, October 26 bringing several balance changes to Constructed, Battlegrounds and Duels. Here's the downlow:
Constructed:
- Embrace of Nature - Now costs (2), up from (1).
- Rake - Now costs (2), up from (2).
- Prison Breaker - Now deals 2 damage to all enemies, down from 3.
- Yogg-Saron, Unleashed - Now costs (9), down from (15). Changed effect to: After you use an ability, cast 2 random spells.
- Tony, King of Piracy - Now costs (7), up from (5). Changed effect: Battlecry: Replace your deck with a copy of your opponent's. Finale: Draw a card. Unbanned from Wild.
- The Jailer - Changed effect: Destroy your deck. This minion gains Immune. Unbanned from Wild.
Constructed Anomaly Update:
The following anomalies have been removed from the pool:
- Driven to Greed: Whenever a player ends their turn with unspent Mana, they get a Coin.
- Army of the Corrupted: The first minion played on each player's turns costs (1) less.
- Spread the Corruption: The first spell played on each player's turns costs (1) less.
Battlegrounds:
- Gusty Trumpeter, Mannoroth and Amalgadon have been removed from the minion pool.
- Gentle Djinni has been added back to the minion pool.
- Relentless Mur'ghoul - Now Avenge (5), up from Avenge (4).
- Piloted Whirl-O-Tron - Now only copies other friendly minions' Deathrattles.
- Gentle Djinni - Now Tier 5, down from Tier 6.
- Admiral Eliza Goreblade - Now gives all friendly minions +3/+1, up from +2/+1.
Battlegrounds Anomaly Update:
- Finicky Hourglass has been removed from the Anomaly Pool.
- Anomalous Twin has been added back to the Anomaly Pool.
- Shackles of the Primus will no longer show up in lower-ranked lobbies, and shows up less frequently in all other lobbies.
Several heroes will no longer show up when the following anomalies are in play:
- Audience's Choice: Tess Greymane, Scabbs Cutterbutter, Reno Jackson, E.T.C., Band Manager, Sneed, Millhouse Manastorm, Lich Baz'hial.
- Anomalous Wisdomball: Infinite Toki.
- Anomalous Twin: Lady Vashj, Ini Stormcoil, Death Speaker Blackthorn.
- Anomalous Bribe: Dancin' Deryl, Death Speaker Blackthorn, Mutanus the Devourer, Professor Putricide.
- The Keys to Victory: Ini Stormcoil, Infinite Toki.
- Bring Home the Bacon: Alexstrasza, Overlord Saurfang.
- Temperence of Aman'Thul: Kurtrus Ashfallen, Rakanishu, Lady Vashj, Overlord Saurfang, Tavish Stormpike, C'thun, Cariel Roame, Voone, Maiev Shadowsong, Cookie the Cook, Tickatus.
- Path of the Treasure Seeker: Scabbs Cutterbutter, Tess Greymane.
Duels:
- Dino Tracking - Now only Discovers Beasts from your class.
- Demon Blood - Now gives a random Demon in your hand +3/+2, up from +2/+2.
- Mind Tether - Now a passive effect: After you cast a spell, deal 1 damage to the enemy hero.
- No Guts, No Glory - Now costs (1), down from (2).
- Outlander - Now Discovers Fel spell instead of adding a random one to your hand.
- Vile Concoction - Now adds a Toxin to your hand instead of a Concoction.
Quote From Blizzard Entertainment Patch 27.6.2 is a data-only patch, launching on October 26, with the following updates:
Hearthstone Updates
Card Updates
Dev Comment: There were two clear meta offenders that we wanted to address in this patch: Yogg-Saron and the Druid class. Recent additions from the mini-set made for overly-powerful neutral board control tools that were warping the meta. These, combined with stand-out Druid cards, made for a Druid shell that was able to cover its class weaknesses and utilize any number of “finishers” to end the game. These changes focus on weakening the Druid shell that facilitated these powerful finishers, while also removing negative play experiences that we believe are causing more pain than fun. After those adjustments, the Jailer and Tony are out on probation, but we’ll be keeping an eye on them, and the rest of the meta, as we head into the Showdown in the Badlands.
Embrace of Nature
Old: [1 Mana]
New: [2 Mana]
Rake
Old: [1 Mana]
New: [2 Mana]
Dev Comment: Druid has a lot of redundancy right now, but Embrace of Nature and Rake are two cards that stand out as particularly integral to the class. They are also both too efficient for their cost. We considered other adjustments to Druid, but these were the two most stand-out choices.
Prison Breaker
Old: Battlecry: If you’ve cast 5 or more spells this game, deal 3 damage to all enemies.
New: Battlecry: If you’ve cast 5 or more spells this game, deal 2 damage to all enemies.
Dev Comment: The current suite of neutral board clears are a bit too punishing to minion-based decks. This change is to open up a bit of space in the meta for early minion strategies.
Yogg-Saron, Unleashed
Old: [15 Mana] Costs (1) less for each spell you’ve cast this game.
New: [9 Mana] After you use an ability, cast 2 random spells.
Dev Comment: When we made Yogg-Saron, we wanted it to be a powerful, exciting marquee card for the mini-set. Unfortunately, it ended up being too overpowered for too long. We’re removing the cost adjustment effect instead of bumping up its cost for two reasons: 1) we want the card to be played in more than just spell-spamming decks; and 2) this is the change we’re most confident will land at the power level we want. We replaced the cost reduction effect with the new random-spells effect because we wanted something that represented the character’s relationship with magic—and madness!
Tony, King of Piracy
Old: [5 Mana] Both players’ decks are swapped. Finale: Draw a card.
New: [7 Mana] Battlecry: Replace your deck with a copy of your opponent’s. Finale: Draw a card.
Tony is also now Unbanned in Wild.
Dev Comment: When cards are causing problems when they’re played the way they’re designed to be played, that means they’re ripe for a redesign. Piracy is not a victimless crime, and Tony only really appeared when he was causing problems. This change keeps the essence of his effect, but avoids the sharp play experiences he caused.
The Jailer
Old: Battlecry: Destroy your deck. For the rest of the game, your minions are Immune.
New: Battlecry: Destroy your deck. This minion gains Immune.
The Jailer is also now Unbanned in Standard and Wild.
Dev Comment: There was some concern that The Jailer would still work too well even with the updated Tony, so we’re making an adjustment here to tone down The Jailer as well and remove a lot of the polarizing situations he could enable.
All versions of the above cards that can be disenchanted will be eligible for full dust refunds for two weeks following Patch 27.6.2.
Ranked Anomaly Updates
The following Anomalies have been removed from the Anomaly Pool:
Driven to Greed: Whenever a player ends their turn with unspent Mana, they get a Coin.
Army of the Corrupted: The first minion played on each player’s turns costs (1) less.
Spread the Corruption: The first spell played on each player’s turns costs (1) less.
Dev Comment: These are the most game-impacting Anomalies, especially when they disproportionately affect one player over the other based on their deck choices.
Battlegrounds Updates
Battlegrounds Anomaly Updates
Anomaly Pool Updates
Finicky Hourglass has been removed from the Anomaly Pool.
Shackles of the Primus has been removed from the Anomaly Pool for lower-ranked lobbies, and appears less frequently than before in all other lobbies.
- Also, the banned minion types for Shackles of the Primus are now: Beasts, Murlocs, Elementals, and Undead.
Anomalous Twin has been returned to the Anomaly Pool.
The following heroes are now banned from the following Anomalies:
Audience’s Choice: Tess Greymane, Scabbs Cutterbutter, Reno Jackson, E.T.C. Band Manager, Sneed, Millhouse Manastorm, Lich Baz’hial
Anomalous Wisdomball: Infinite Toki
Anomalous Twin: Lady Vashj, Ini Stormcoil, Death Speaker Blackthorn
Anomalous Bribe: Dancin’ Deryl, Death Speaker Blackthorn, Mutanus the Devourer, Professor Putricide
The Keys to Victory: Ini Stormcoil, Infinite Toki
Bring Home the Bacon: Alexstrasza, Overlord Saurfang
Temperence of Aman’Thul: Kurtrus Ashfallen, Rakanishu, Lady Vashj, Overlord Saurfang, Tavish Stormpike, C’Thun, Cariel Roame, Voone, Maiev Shadowsong, Cookie the Cook, Tickatus
Path of the Treasure Seaker: Scabbs Cutterbutter, Tess Greymane
Minion Pool Updates
Gusty Trumpeter, Mannoroth, and Amalgadon (Tier 7) have been removed from the minion pool.
Gentle Djinni has been returned to the minion pool.
Minion Updates
Relentless Mur’ghoul
Old: Venomous. Avenge (4): Gain Reborn.
New: Venomous. Avenge (5): Gain Reborn.
Piloted Whirl-O-Tron
Old: Start of Combat: Copy all other minions’ Deathrattles (except Piloted Whirl-O-Tron).
New: Start of Combat: Copy all other friendly minions’ Deathrattles (except Piloted Whirl-O-Tron).
Gentle Djinni
Old: [Tier 6]
New: [Tier 5]
Admiral Eliza Goreblade
Old: Whenever a friendly Pirate attacks, give all friendly minions +2/+1.
New: Whenever a friendly Pirate attacks, give all friendly minions +3/+1.
Duels Updates
Hero Power Updates
Dino Tracking
Old: Discover a Beast. Give it +1/+1.
New: Discover a Beast from your class. Give it +1/+1.
Demon Blood
Old: Give a random Demon in your hand +2/+2.
New: Give a random Demon in your hand +3/+2.
Mind Tether
Old: [1 Mana] After each spell you cast this turn, deal 1 damage to the enemy hero.
New: Passive: After you cast a spell, deal 1 damage to the enemy hero.
No Guts, No Glory
Old: 2 Mana
New: 1 Mana
Outlander
Old: If you played an Outcast card this turn, add a random Fel spell to your hand.
New: If you played an Outcast card this turn, Discover a Fel Spell.
Vile Concoction
Old: Give a minion Poisonous. Combo: Add a Concoction to your hand.
New: Give a minion Poisonous. Combo: Add a Toxin to your hand.
Bug Fixes and Game Improvements
[Hearthstone] Fixed a text issue with Lakkari Sacrifice.
[Battlegrounds] Anima Bride and Invigorating Conch Quest Rewards are no longer pickable together.
[Duels] Fixed a bug where Blade of Quel’Delar and Hilt of Quel’Delar did not combine into Sword of Quel’Delar.
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 23 - Day 13 [Finished]](the-great-dark-beyond-day-13.webp)
Comments
Well there goes 2 meme decks that i play that contain The Jailer, that will no longer work.
What are your opinions on decks that will stop working because nerfs to specific cards.
Really like these nerfs even though my favorite decks are gonna get hit hard. The Tony re-work is just priceless and exactly what I wanted considering pirating is copying from another person. The flavor is now spot on. The Yogg re-work is a nice touch coz Yogg is all about random and the massive mana cheating was the main problem with him, not his abilities. The Jailer I don't care about coz I never owned him but I would say Immune is probably the most broken mechanic in the game so it's good they limited it to just the Jailer himself. Also as mentioned previously, it's good to future-proof such an obnoxious effect.
Overall, I'd imagine quite a big hit to Secret Hunter seeing as Prison Breaker is such a good board clear in that deck and I doubt Yogg will be used in the archetype anymore. Oh well, guess I'll be going back to Pure/Silver Hand Paladin now but I'd imagine Rogue will jump up a tier coz most of it's bad match ups have been dealt with.
Really like these re-works, even if they killed these cards. It was for the best.
I'm pretty curious to where Rogue is going to stand after the nerfs honestly. Mech Rogue definitely seems like its going to benefit the most from these given the fact that none of their cards got touched, but Yogg was definitely one of the stronger cards in the secret/miracle lists solely from Shadowstep/Breakdance effectively giving you 1-4 extra copies. I'm having a bit of a hard time being able to justify what is more or less a value 9 drop in a deck that is usually trying to close out the game by turn 9, even if being able to rebuy it constantly could be helpful in matches that do end up going long. Like you said though, definitely think the Yogg nerf is more or less for the best, even though I will be upset that my turn 5, 6, and 7 mind controls aren't going to work anymore.
I don't get why they nerfed Tony's Cost on top of its effect. Now he's basically Archbishop Benedictus, a card that was already bad when it came out six years ago...
You say Benedictus was bad, but plenty of control priest decks of the era used that as their "win condition" (or at least to enable their win condition, which was to wait for the heat death of the universe). Maybe we just remember things differently, or maybe control priest was worse than I remember.
Was there even a control priest back then that played benedictus at all? All priest post KotFT was pretty much raza priest, the only time Ive ever seen it in competitive is literally as a meme.
Maybe Im misremembering but there wasnt even a pure attrition control deck during that era, all the way until witchwood after all the DKs rotated. Only one that I remember, and that deck was crap as well, was controlock, before the kobolds set started.
Overall it certainly looks like Wild finally gets the much needed attention, even if those nerfs are mostly aimed at Standard.
That leaves us with only two decks that look problematic for me - Quest Mage and Mine Rogue. Both are incredibly frustrating to play against. Mage has the downside of being quite reliant on RNG to work out for them while Rogue luckily is pretty boring to play even when you're winning. Maybe that's enough to save us from those two dominating the meta, but I'd love to see them being adressed anyway.
I don’t know the last time I saw a Mine Rogue. I might have faced one last week, but he was dead before he could combo me, so I never saw a Mine hit the board. I have seen an increase in Waygate Mages though. I was super annoyed by Vexallis and the never ending Conjure Biscuits this one guy had. At that point just go play solitaire!
I think the bigger problem for mage is Ice Block, and honestly you could write a whole article on how to nerf that.
wow, all this time they've had to work this out and they didnt even attempt to keep any of these cards playable. ive gotten used to the balance team being completely incompetent over the years but for them to take this amount of time just to completely and utterly ruin THREE LEGENDARIES is just embarrassing. tony and jailer are now completely worthless and at 9 mana yogg will almost certainly see zero play outside of druid. i mean seriously, they didnt even attempt to keep any of the original concept of tony, they just gutted the card in its entirety.
also tony is now a hard counter to literally any mill deck so if you were someone that enjoyed the 1 month there was finally a viable mill deck again now you get nothing!
ALSO best deck in standard is by far plague dk now so get ready to exclusively queue into a deck that is so completely braindead that it literally plays itself once you have helya down
but thats totally more fun than playing against druid right??? : )))
The Jailer is still an excellent counter to decks like Plague DK, it's an alternate Steamcleaner.
Jailer is unplayable now.
I actually like the Yogg nerf. The whole point of Yogg is casting random spells, and now he does this. Playing him for free always felt like cheating when I did it, and as Rogue, you can do it over and over.
he already did that with the ability that fills your hand. now he'll never do it because no ones going to play him
Guess the funding for team5 must have been severely stretched, because these harken us back to the brode days when nerfs more or less remove cards from the game.
Because the nerf to jailer, yogg and tony is about as unimaginative as it can get. Jailer now gains immune as opposed to giving it out, not even a stat buff. Tony is practically warsong-ed, being now completely worthless. And yogg got neutered to such an extent as to render it unusable to all but meme. Is it really that much to ask for yogg to either have a limit to the mana reduction, or just replacing the Mass Hysteria ability.
Oh well, I guess that's an easy 3200 dust, more if there are still some that havent dusted tony from before.
Other nerfs are fine. Embrace of Nature definitely needs nerfing because it'll be relevant throughout its lifespan, its still relevant even post nerf to me. Rake and Prison Breaker have been responsible for patching over weaknesses of both druid and rogue so it had to be done as well. I still think rake will see play, but probably prison breaker would be confined to rogue.
insane that you cant comment anything negative without getting downvoted; everything you said is 100 percent true ppl just hate to admit when the hs team fumbles the bag (which is often)
Yogg is still a great value card for reasonable price as any other titan is. And now it can be used in any deck as it doesn't need spells. If prison of yogg was played then this yogg will too
I kinda forgot about Prison of Yogg-Saron because that card hasnt been seen again ever since Yogg-Saron, Unleashed was introduced. Ironically its because prison of yogg is superceded in its usage by yogg himself.
Now, with the nerfs, Im even less optimistic about new yogg's chances because Id just play prison of yogg instead. 9 mana mind-control or board clear is terrible in 2023. Unless there's a way to cheat him out I dont think hes ever gonna see any more play outside of meme potential.
Nerfed Tony is now a hard counter to Mill Druid. He went from the Dark Side to the Light.
I dont play much wild admitably. But I feel you can easily tech Skulking Geist and/or Archivist Elysiana for that, aside from just killing them faster which is entirely possible in wild. But more to the point, its never a good thing to play a card that will have only one good matchup. You cant even just play it for tempo because it ruins your deck (and is poorly stated for cost), unless that's entirely the plan.
Also, there's no reason why a card like that is 7 mana. Team5 pre-emptively set his mana cost high so the chances of mischief is a lot less likely. Its unlikely to do anything now other than being filler.
You don't have to run it in your main deck, you shove it in ETC. People are already running Steam Cleaner or Geist in ETC for that reason, but copying Jade Idol is way better than destroying it. If you copy their deck of Jade Idols, all of their draw acceleration becomes useless which basically fucks their whole game over.
It also has other utility. A Rogue could use it for fatigue protection after they draw their whole deck on turn 3. It's not super useful, but having an extra niche pushes tech cards into viability.