Blizzard has announced that we're getting a patch today - quite an exciting Monday! This will be the first balance patch of Fractured in Alterac Valley and it includes both buffs and nerfs. We've summarized the changes down below. If you'd like to read the reasoning behind all the changes, you can find that in the official patch notes further down the page.
Card Nerfs in Hearthstone Patch 22.0.2
- Celestial Alignment now costs 8 (Up from 7).
- Alliance Bannerman now has 1 Health (Down from 2).
- Efficient Octo-bot now costs 3 (Up from 2).
- Snowfall Guardian now costs 6 (Up from 5).
- Touch of the Nathrezim now restores 3 Health (Down from 4).
- Runed Mithril Rod now costs 5 (Up from 4).
- Bloodsail Deckhand now has 1 Health (Down from 2).
- Irondeep Trogg no longer summons a clone but a baseline Irondeep Trogg.
- Mo'arg Artificer now costs 3 (Up from 2). Health increased to 5 (Up from 4).
All the above cards will be disenchantable for their full value for the next two weeks - until January 3, 2022. Remember, you can type "refund" in your collection manager's search box to find these cards easily!
Card Buffs in Hearthstone Patch 22.0.2
- Beaststalker Tavish's Summon Pet now costs 2 (Down from 3).
- Grey Sage Parrot now costs 6 (Down from 8). Stats moved to 4/5 (Down from 6/6).
- Magister Dawngrasp now costs 7 (Down from 8). Hero power now deals 2 damage (Up from 1).
- Wildfire now persists for the entire game, even after swapping hero powers.
Official Patch Notes
Quote From Blizzard Patch 22.0.2, launching today, includes balance changes for Standard and Battlegrounds, a system update for Mercenaries, and more!
Standard Balance Updates
Dev Comment: We’re coming up on two weeks since the launch of Fractured in Alterac Valley and, while players are still finding success with quite a variety of strategies, we want to open up the format further. This patch is mainly focused on weakening some of the stronger, combo-centric strategies that have had long-term success throughout the Year of the Gryphon.
The following cards have been adjusted down in power:
Celestial Alignment
- Old: [Costs 7] → New: [Costs 8]
- Dev Comment: Although Celestial Alignment is not usually a card used for from-hand, burst damage, it does frequently allow for absurd turns that happen a little earlier than we feel is healthy. Moving it up a mana should allow for more setup and counterplay before Celestial Alignment is cast.
Alliance Bannerman
- Old: 2 Attack, 2 Health → New: 2 Attack, 1 Health
- Dev Comment: Paladins have a very consistent, powerful package of cards that they can include in quite a few distinct strategies. Alliance Bannerman is one of these cards that can fit into a wide range of decks. Lowering its Health by one should tone down Paladin decks by a small amount across the board.
Efficient Octo-bot
- Old: [Costs 2] → New: [Costs 3]
- Dev Comment: Efficient Octo-bot has been a little too efficient at the upper echelons of play. We’re slowing it down as part of the general goal of toning down the power level of combo strategies.
Snowfall Guardian
- Old: [Costs 5] → New: [Costs 6]
- Dev Comment: Snowfall Guardian was designed with the intent of giving Freeze Shaman decks a powerful tool, but it is a little too efficient at locking up the board, especially when combined with cards like Brilliant Macaw. Moving it up one mana should soften the power of this interaction.
Touch of the Nathrezim
- Old: Deal 2 damage to a minion. If it dies, restore 4 Health to your hero. → New: Deal 2 damage to a minion. If it dies, restore 3 Health to your hero.
- Dev Comment: Touch of the Nathrezim is meant to be a solid removal option for slower Warlock decks, but the overall Health restoration in Warlock is slightly too high. This is meant to be a softer change that leaves Warlock with a powerful removal option, but reduces overall Warlock healing capabilities enough to bring that aspect of the class back in line.
Runed Mithril Rod
- Old: [Costs 4] → New: [Costs 5]
- Dev Comment: Runed Mithril Rod was an incredibly strong tool in the first few days after the launch of Fractured in Alterac Valley. While players were able to find a counter to it in cards like Rustrot Viper, we believe going up a Mana here will lead to healthier play patterns for the game overall.
Bloodsail Deckhand
- Old: 2 Attack, 2 Health → New: 2 Attack, 1 Health
- Dev Comment: We’re reverting our previous change to Bloodsail Deckhand. Questline Warrior ended up slightly stronger than intended, and we believe it will continue to find success after this change.
Irondeep Trogg
- Old: After your opponent casts a spell, summon a copy of this. → New: After your opponent casts a spell, summon another Irondeep Trogg.
- Dev Comment: Irondeep Trogg has the capability of running away with games very early when combined with minion buffs like Noble Mount or Doggie Biscuit. Taking into account the rest of the changes we’re making with this patch, we want to adjust Trogg to remain a viable counter to early spells, but to better match the targeted power level of the format as a whole.
Mo’arg Artificer
- Old: [Costs 2] 2 Attack, 4 Health → New: [Costs 3] 2 Attack, 5 Health
- Dev Comment: Mo’arg Artificer does too much, too efficiently for decks with large amounts of removal. Increasing its cost by one will make the card a little less efficient as a tool for cheap clears, large amounts of life gain, and combo finishers.
The collectible cards listed above will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the 22.0.2 patch goes live. Bloodsail Deckhand is not eligible for the dust refund, because it's a Core Set card, not a collectible one.
Dev Comment: Alongside the changes above, we’re also making a couple adjustments aimed at powering up slower Mage decks and the less powerful Hero Cards.
The following cards have been adjusted up in power:
Beaststalker Tavish
- Old: [Hero Power Costs 3] → New: [Hero Power Costs 2]
Grey Sage Parrot
- Old: [Costs 8] 6 Attack, 6 Health → New: [Costs 6] 4 Attack, 5 Health
Magister Dawngrasp
- Old: [Costs 8] → New: [Costs 7]
- Old: Hero Power: Deal 1 Damage. Honorable Kill: Gain +2 Damage. → New: Hero Power: Deal 2 Damage. Honorable Kill: Gain +2 Damage.
Wildfire
- Old: Increase the damage of your Hero Power by 1. → New: Increase the damage of your Hero Power by 1 this game.
- Dev Comment: This is a minor rework to make it so that Wildfire will now persist after swapping Hero Powers. Although we don’t envision this being dramatically impactful, we do think it will allow for a smoother gameplay experience with Hero Power changing cards like Magister Dawngrasp.
Battlegrounds Balance Updates
HERO UPDATES
Sneed
- Armor Tier changed from Tier 1 (0 Armor) to Tier 2 (2-5 Armor)
- Sneed’s Replicator
- Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]
Tamsin
- Fragrant Phylactery
- Old: [Costs 0] Start of Combat: Destroy your lowest Health minion. Give its Health to all your others. → New: [Costs 1] Start of Combat: Destroy your lowest Health minion. Give its stats to all your others.
Scabbs Cutterbutter
- Armor Tier changed from Tier 2 (2-5 Armor) to Tier 1 (0 Armor)
Cariel Roame
- Armor Tier changed from Tier 6 (6-9 Armor) to Tier 7 (7-10 Armor)
Deathwing
- Armor Tier changed from Tier 4 (4-7 Armor) to Tier 5 (5-8 Armor)
Millificent Manastorm
- Armor Tier changed from Tier 3 (3-6 Armor) to Tier 5 (5-8 Armor)
Overlord Saurfang
- Armor Tier changed from Tier 6 (6-9 Armor) to Tier 7 (7-10 Armor)
Patches the Pirate
- Armor Tier changed from Tier 3 (3-6 Armor) to Tier 2 (2-5 Armor)
Trade Prince Gallywix
- Armor Tier changed from Tier 4 (4-7 Armor) to Tier 2 (2-5 Armor)
MINION UPDATES
Prized Promo-Drake
- Old: 5 Attack, 5 Health → New: 3 Attack, 3 Health
Dazzling Lightspawn
- Old: 4 Attack, 5 Health → New: 2 Attack, 5 Health
Mercenaries Update
- All Heroic Level 30 Bounties will now include at least one pile of Legendary Coins (chosen from the selection of Coins designated for each Bounty) as part of their Bounty completion rewards.
Arena Update
- Abominable Lieutenant is no longer draftable in Arena.
Bug Fixes & Game Improvements
- The base versions of Drek’Thar and Vanndar are now eligible for full dust refunds. We will be doing a separate update later on patch day to grant additional Arcane Dust to players who already disenchanted either card.
- Fixed a bug where the Duels treasure Impcredible Trousers did not properly shuffle the imp portals.
Comments
Does anyone know that bugged achievements have been fixed or not?
Ok trogg was crap, good riddance, but other than this we may loose some fun decks in what was a rather healthy meta.
The last weeks before expansion were awful in terms of fun and interactivity and that was a result of bad thought nerfs, I hope it turns out better this time but I'm not super confident.
Oh well at least we had 15 days of cool HS...
So after I played for more than a month, playing casually, but mostly grinding bounty to get those precious Malfurion (legendary) coins...
NOW we get the info that we can collect legendary coins little faster... I would say - "good change" but now I also feel bad for grinding Malfurion coins, you know...
I doubt I am the only one who has the feeling of lost time.
Yeah, I tried farming Malfurion too but gave up after so many fruitless runs. Farming heroic boars felt so much better; at least with an all-legendary team I was guaranteed to get 10 coins of some legendary with minimal effort.
The bad taste still lingers so I might just stick to boars for a while longer, thanks Blizzard. It's not what the devs intended but they have their stingy money people to thank for that.
Edit: just realised that the change doesn't apply to Malfurion's Fallen Guardians heroic bounty run because it is not level 30 so you can feel "less bad" for grinding Malfurion coins, yay?
Oh crap, you are right :D I was convinced that it is actually a level 30, but it's not.
So at least starting from Winterspring, where I felt those Bounties got significantly harder to grind, the legendary coins will appear.
Still a looong way to go, to improve Mercenaries economy overall ("dust" system, pack system with adding more and more Mercenaries to the pool and few others).
You're not wrong about that feels-bad moment when they (inevitably?) improve the systems we grinded on though. So starting today and until Blizzard improves Mercenaries to an acceptable level I'm going to 1) only play Mercenaries to complete Toki's daily task and Hearthstone's daily quests, and 2) stop opening Mercenaries Packs. Putting this out here so y'all on OoC can hold me to this lol.
How do you counterplay the Alignment? You mean aggro it down not on turn 5 but turn 6?
Good lord, my dust collection will be smiling today. Seems like there is a positive in not dusting those golden cards months back after all.
Alright, here's my take on the changes;
- Celestial Alignment nerf is more likely to change things a bit with druid rather than as a necessary power nerf. Most druids nowadays just ramp so they can play this card, not ramp to big stuff like they used to so this change is welcomed so we see more variety. Unfortunately once again team5 have ignored my request for lightning bloom to get nerfed, but since trogg is now no longer a cheesable card guess we'll all see more Drek'Thar openings then.
- Alliance Bannerman got one of the least likeliest nerf ever, with a small health change. Would it be impactful? I doubt it. The card is and was always a tempo loss to begin with but it does mean that if you have a weapon in hand this card is straight up never surviving anything. I dont think this card going anywhere soon.
- Efficient Octo-bot and Runed Mithril Rod would probably never be played again, being now too expensive and conditional. Octobot's nerf means you cant coin into this anymore and there's more contrivance required to believe it'll trigger without you doing it yourself. Rod on the other hand is just too expensive at that range because once the heat gets up you cant equip this thing without dying.
- I didn't think they'd nerf Snowfall Guardian to be honest, because I thought they can easily just give us Living Dragonbreath in the next core set. Guess we wont be seeing that card next April. A nerf to 6 means its unlikely to be an auto keep in the mulligan against tempo decks because its simply too slow now.
- Touch of the Nathrezim has been slightly touched upon. Likely we'll still be seeing much of this anyway.
- Bloodsail Deckhand will still see play because of the interaction with the quest and Whetstone Hatchet. But at very least it means anything will kill this now. Wish the nerf happened to Stormwind Freebooter too.
- The two most biggest nerf today would actually be to Irondeep Trogg and Mo'arg Artificer. No more cheesing of trogg means no more druid bs, no one turn 1 concedes, and almost certainly sending priest back to the drawing board. At least I can now comfortably remove this from my paladin decks because it sucks now, hard. One of the biggest thing this card does being replicating several Noble Mounts placed on it that paladin never loses board ever again. Wouldn't be surprised if I never see trogg ever again, which is just as well because I have a golden copy of it.
Mo'arg Artificer nerf needed to happen because dhunters and warlocks have been abusing this card since its inception. At least now its significantly harder to play, but I don't think it'll disappear from the meta entirely. What it does is sometimes just irreplaceable, especially to dhunters who lacks better removal options. It doesn't just die to Immolation Aura and School Spirits now, which might crop out to be somewhat significant because its still an impossible card to ignore on board.
As for buffs. Magister Dawngrasp is certainly a winner here. Don't be too surprised to see your opponent with a 4 damage hp now. I reckon that she'll be played in more ping decks rather than big decks, because the most important thing about this card isn't the value it brings, its actually surviving playing an 8, now 7, mana card without dying. That hp being now a straight up upgrade means its no longer an embarrassment playing it.
The way Wildfire works with this card makes me wonder how many will try that interaction with Frost Lich Jaina, one of the reasons this change happened in the first place if Im not mistaken.
Tavish getting that 2 mana hp is nice, but I dont think it'll change too much. Its still a 1 in 3 for huffer and from my experience playing this, you'd still much rather have the original hp if aggression is your thing. Might make it less awkward to fill your mana curve at very least.
From what I can see: Ping mage might be moving up a few tiers because of Wildfire and Magister Dawngrasp, no change to both paladin and quest warrior, warlock takes a few steps back, while big mage is no longer a 100% shot to the head. Up on top will continue to be face hunter, paladin and quest warrior, while the bottom will be priest, warlock and mage still, though less embarrassingly bad.
Priest and mage have massive upsides though, since this change touched 4 different OTK decks. I think pros would be moving on to either rogue or freeze shaman, assuming owlock is dead now.
Edit: Forgot mozaki mage exist. Fingers crossed that its not going to dominate because celestial alignment got nerfed.
I cant understand how people consider Trogg a healthy card, ill make a scenario to explain why i dont enjoy it, imagine the top 2 decks in the meta is Elemental Shaman and Mech Paladin, then they release a card that has decent stats, cost low and hard counters all tribes, it would give some decks a chance to fight against the best, but at same time, Pirate, Murlocs, Demons and all other tribe decks who alreadly werent doing that well competitively will have their winrates go bellow oblivion.
And thats how i feel with Trogg, yeah its a hot take and im sure many will disagree, but it really bothers me.
Damn...guess we not getting that bug fix to gameplay achievements then... bummer...
Abominable Lieutenant is no longer draftable in Arena.
Should have been that way from the start, literally no testing needed for that one. But at least they did it soon enough.
Imagine printing a Hero card so bad it needed two buffs
Nice work, going one step forward and two steps back on the Trogg nerf. I guess OTKs will still continue to reign and with our new champion Mozaki Mage coming out of the shadows to finally destroy everyone. I guess Mage hasn’t been op for a while and Celestalon or whoever needed the ez ranks. Hopefully the changes do something and I’m just not being overly skeptica
Mage is garbage atm, what are you talking about? Even with the nerfs, Rogue is still much better. You're gonna be begging for Mage to come back once every other game is Questlock though.
This is very welcome news! I wonder if this also means that the button is getting pushed at an attempt to bring the class winrates closer together.
I hope so!
It's a joke that we have to wait for so long for simple balance re-adjustments. Especially since Team5 have shown before, that they are able to do it few days after expansion launched.
I"m confused to the Alliance Bannerman. It is used as a handbuff and soft tutor. How is making it more easy to die a nerf? If they increased the cost, that would be a nerf. If they made it a 1/1, that would be a kind of nerf. But it still can deal 2 damage on it's own and pulls something from your deck and buffs your hand.
These changes will make Wild worse. The two meta tyrants are Quest Hunter and Quest Warrior. The first one will have its best counter taken away and the second one will only be nerfed very lightly. Meanwhile the new Tier 1 contenders, Handbuff Paladin and Freeze Shaman will both receive pretty significant hits.
Buffs: Those mage buffs are AMAZING. I love ping mage, and Wildfires buff is incredible. Now you can play Wildfire into Magister Dawngrasp without losing the damage. ALSO this is a BIG buff for ODD Mage because Frost Lich Jaina also gets buffed because of the Wildfire buff.
As someone who plays a lot of Magister Dawngrasps, the hero powers starting damage wasn't that big of a problem. The problem was mostly that it felt bad to play Magister Dawngrasp without playing a bunch of spells to re-cast. (And the mana cost) The +1 dmg buff is nice, but also kind of a nerf at the same time. This "buff" now means you want to honorably kill a 2-4-6-8-etc. minion, instead of a 1-3-5-7-etc. minion. And in all the times i played Magister Dawngrasp finding a 3-5-7 health minion to honorably kill is a LOT easier than 4-6-8 health minion. Still with some more experience of playing around with the buffed version of Magister Dawngrasp, i might change opinion on this. The +1 dmg could potentially snowball a bit faster. BUT the one thing that might be the most interesting thing about this change, is that Magister Dawngrasp can now be played in a ODD mage deck. (Not sure how good that will be, but it's going to be fun experimenting with it.)
Grey Sage Parrot buff is also solid i.m.o. It was way too expensive, and now it might show up in some Big Spell Mage lists. You just know this card was garbage based on the fact that it didn't see much play within the first 2 days of the Altarac release.
Beaststalker Tavish "buff" is how he should have been from the get-go. I already found it weird that some hero cards such as Lightforged Cariels Blessing of Queens is a cheaper Blessing of Kings, but you have to pay the full cost for Beaststalker Tavishs Summon Pet. This was just odd to me, and it made Beaststalker Tavish so much harder to use. I have played Beaststalker Tavish A LOT during the 80+ games of Secret BIG Hunter that i played since expansion release, and having to pay 3 mana for the hero power was often way too difficult to slot into a turn. (Often meant playing 1 less secret each turn) But now that it costs 2 you can summon a lot more Huffers. (Always Huffer) with the hero power. And you can now hero power AND Beastmaster Leoroxx on the same turn, so that's nice.
Nerfs: Most nerfs were to be expected, but i'm still kinda surprised they went with "+1 mana" nerf so much. I had personally expected things like : -1 durability on Runed Mithril Rod.
However i'm honestly the most surprised about the Alliance Bannerman, Bloodsail Deckhand and Irondeep Trogg nerfs. Alliance Bannerman is good, but i didn't expect it to get nerfed. Also this is basicly a pointless nerf i.m.o. because the battlecry is why you play it. Even as a 1/1 minion Alliance Bannerman will still see play.
Bloodsail Deckhand gets it's buff reverted. I kinda like this change, because it makes it harder for Pirate warrior to lock down the board right away. However i'm surprised that Raid the Docks itself managed to dodge the nerf. (Expected that to get a similar treatment as the shaman questline)
Irondeep Trogg nerf is also something i knew could happen, but was also kinda hoping it wouldn't because i feared that non-questline decks would become a lot weaker if Trogg got nerfed. However this Saronite Chain Gang like treatment shouldn't affect Trogg too much. It will remain super strong against spell-heavy decks, but it will become a bit easier to remove buffed up Troggs. Which i.m.o. is a good change. Just look at buff paladin decks, where the person who gets a trogg down first insta-wins. That is i.m.o. was not healthy for the game. (But at the same time the questlines mostly aren't healthy for the game either.)
It indeed won't have a big impact, but it's not zero. Remember EVIL Miscreant which went from a "slightly too strong" to a "pretty good" card through a simple 1 health nerf? Sure, the nerf doesn't matter in every game, but it will push the overall winrate down by a few percentages.