Update: Blizzard has announced the changes!

A whopping 23 card changes are due to arrive this week for Showdown in the Badlands! With the patch primarily focusing on buffs to underperforming cards, there are also a handful of nerfs arriving that players should be happy about. Blizzard has released the list of cards that are receiving changes but if you want the actual details, we'll need to wait until tomorrow for the full patch notes.

Developer Insights

Quote From Blizzard

The overall goals for this patch are to make buffs across underperforming classes, decks, and cards, especially ones from Showdown in the Badlands, and to weaken a few overperforming decks that are keeping other decks down. Our intent isn’t to kill these decks that players generally like, but to bring them down a little to make more room in the meta.

Paladin has been the biggest overperformer since the last adjustment. We’re targeting its AoE board clears because that’s a mechanic we want Paladin to have access to, but not excel in. There are other potential targets that we looked at, but they were cards that were more in line with what we want the class strengths to be.

Dragon Druid was another outlier with a strong matchup spread. We like the deck’s general patterns, and players seem to be excited by it, so we wanted to just shave a little power from it, to make it more attackable in the early game.

By some measures, Doctor Holli’Dae is the best card in Standard. It’s important for a highlander payoff card to be worth the cost of putting it into your deck, but we wanted to rein this one in a bit. We shaved one attack off the weapon to reduce the overall power while preserving the coolest part of the card: frogs.

Finally, there are two versions of Rainbow Mage, both of which are pretty strong and pretty popular. We don’t want to kill the decks, just keep them in line with the other decks we’re adjusting in this patch. This change makes them a little worse at muddying up the early board while developing their gameplan.

Cards Being Buffed

Priest Buffs

Quote From Blizzard

Priest hasn’t been able to find its footing in the Badlands, so we’re adjusting a few cards in it—including three Legendary minions. The challenge with Priest was that we wanted to improve the new archetypes without just buffing Control Priest, which is currently on a razor’s edge. Ra-den is not directly tied to one of the Showdown in the Badlands archetypes, but it’s a cool card that never landed so we wanted to give it a boost, too.

Rogue Buffs

  • The Azerite Scorpion
    • New: They cost (1) less for each time you’ve Excavated this game (but not less than 1).
    • Old: If you’ve Excavated 8 times, they cost (0).
  • Velarok Windblade - Now requires you to play one card from another class (Down from 3).
  • Shell Game - Now Costs 2 (Down from 3)

Quote From Blizzard

Rogue hasn’t had success with the new Excavate and Burgle cards, and we see players excited to try this archetype. The challenge with Scorpion is that we don’t want the spells to just become fuel for Draka and Sinstone Graveyard. This change makes the card smoother to play throughout the game, but the 1-mana limit should prevent it from just becoming a Miracle pop-off generator.

Warlock Buffs

Quote From Blizzard

Sludge Warlock is a cool deck that hasn’t landed. We didn’t think there was a good way to make the deck performant without changing the Sludges themselves, but we didn’t want to push them too far and turn this into an OTK deck. This change makes them more potent when you dispose of them without making them too strong as played (but the Pop’gar adjustment means the Sludges still cost 1 with it out).

Death Knight Buffs

Quote From Blizzard

Maw and Paw is a cool card that has gotten a lot of attention. Some players have suggested that one of its rune requirements be removed, but its effect implies both runes so we’d rather just make this card stronger—one attack can do a lot with a minion this sticky. Speaking of multiple runes, Climactic Necrotic Explosion has not worked as enough of a Rainbow payoff. The card already does a lot, so we wanted to just make those effects hit a little harder. Some players have asked about having CNE spend all your corpses first, but we don’t like how that would completely change the texture of the deck. Instead, we’re making Corpse Bride a more exciting and safer big Corpse spender.

Warrior Buffs

Quote From Blizzard

Khaz’goroth is one of the weaker Titans right now, and we think the type of decks that run it could use a little more power, but we didn’t want to push it so far that it would go into more aggressive Warrior decks. Slagmaw is just weak right now, so we’re setting its alarm clock a little earlier.

Neutral Buffs

Quote From Blizzard

This change should improve not just this card directly, but also any cards that generate Quickdraw cards.

Cards Being Nerfs

These cards will be disenchantable for a full refund for "at least three weeks" following the patch.

Quote From Blizzard

Additionally, for this patch, all players who have Diamond Doctor Holli’Dae will keep the card and receive a grant of 1600 Arcane Dust at login later this week. We’re taking a look at what systemic changes might look like for Diamond cards impacted by balance changes, so things may work differently in the future.

Cards Being.. Banned?

Update: Blizzard has confirmed Pyrotechnician is being "temporarily banned"

Not in buffs or nerfs, and certainly not with the usual icon that denotes changes are inbound, Pyrotechnician looks like it might be a bit of an extreme change, or a temporary ban of sorts. We have no clue though so this is purely speculation.

Quote From Blizzard

If we had a nickel for each time a problematic Druid deck was refined after we locked our balance patch contents, we’d have, like… 2-3 nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s enough that we wanted to take quick action before we left for the year. We weren’t able to get a balance change for the newly emerging Fire Druid into this patch, so we’re temporarily banning it until we can re-asses in our next balance window.

Bug Fixes

Quote From Blizzard

[Hearthstone] Boomboss Tho’grun has had a text-only update for clarity.
[Battlegrounds] Fixed bugs with Titus’ Tribute and Upper Hand causing issues. Both have been returned to Tavern Spell pool.
[Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where Silas Darkmoon’s hero power would trigger when Ritual of Growth was played.
[Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where minions would lose their buffs when locked in hand by the Maiev Shadowsong hero power.
[Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where Strike Oil didn’t work with Ambassador Faelin.
[Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where Annoy-o-Module gave an additional buff when Magnetized.
[Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where Tavern Spell visual sigil effects didn’t work from the opponent’s perspective if they were gotten through means other than being purchased from the Tavern.

So, it's time we ask you to make your predictions! What do you think the changes are going to be? Are there any cards you think Blizzard should have targeted but didn't this time around? Let us know in the comments below.