The many, many Balance changes, announced for today, but now in detail. Come check out the buffs (and nerfs)!
Patch is LIVE!
Quote from BlizzardPatch 26.0.4 is a data-only patch that includes bug fixes and balance updates to Standard, Wild, Battlegrounds, and Duels!
Hearthstone Updates
Dev Comment: Overall, we’re pretty happy with meta diversity and power in Standard right now. There are a few outliers that we’re looking to reign in with this patch, but the bigger focus is on raising the power level of some of the new Festival of Legends cards and archetypes, so that they can compete with the stronger stuff and people can feel better about trying out these fun new strategies.
System Update
All Death Knight cards with any three-rune requirements (Frost-Frost-Frost, Blood-Frost-Unholy, etc.) are now removed from all Discover pools and random generation effects.
Dev Comment: Death Knight is very strong as a class right now, and this change weakens the class across the board. We’ve also received a lot of feedback that one of the more frustrating parts of playing against Death Knights is when they are able to generate additional copies of their powerful triple-rune cards—particularly when the card is one the deck didn’t have access to in deckbuilding.
Card Updates
The following cards have been adjusted to be less powerful:
Rowdy Fan
- Old: Battlecry: Choose a minion. It has +4 Attack while this is alive.
- New: Battlecry: Choose a minion. It has +3 Attack while this is alive.
- Dev Comment: Rowdy fan has gotten a lot of attention in combination with Lady S’Theno, a powerful combo at high levels of play. But even outside of that combo, it’s a card that is just a bit too efficient at its rate in a wide variety of decks.
Overseer Frigidara
- Old: 5 Attack, 6 Health
- New: 3 Attack, 6 Health
- Dev Comment: Death Knight has several strong decks, and Frost Death Knight stands out as the strongest of the bunch. We wanted to shave a bit more power off it by bringing one of its best cards more in line with the rest of the deck.
Twig of the World Tree
- Old: Deathrattle: Gain 10 Mana Crystals.
- New: Deathrattle: Refresh your Mana Crystals.
- Dev Comment: Twig of the World Tree is the best card in a really good deck leading to some frustrating play experiences in Wild right now. The interaction between Twig of the World Tree and Sphere of Sapience didn’t exist when Twig was first printed, so this change is to curb this card’s power level and bring it back closer to the original play pattern.
Rowdy Fan and Twig of the World Tree will be eligible for full dust refunds for two weeks following Patch 26.0.4. Overseer Frigidara is a Core Set card, so it can’t be crafted or disenchanted.
The following cards have been adjusted to be more powerful:
Rock Master Voone
- Old: [4 Mana]
- New: [3 Mana]
Verse Riff
- Old: [2 Mana]
- New: [1 Mana]
Bridge Riff
- Old: [6 Mana]
- New: [5 Mana]
Power Slider
- Old: 1 Attack, 2 Health
- New: 2 Attack, 3 Health
Shield Block
- Old: [3 Mana]
- New: [2 Mana]
Frightened Flunky
- Old: 2 Attack, 2 Health
- New: 2 Attack, 3 Health
Thori’belore
- Old: Rush. Deathrattle: Go Dormant. Cast a Fire spell to revive Thori-belore! (Revives 2 times.)
- New: Rush. Deathrattle: Go Dormant. Cast a Fire spell to revive Thori-belore!
Dev Comment: Warrior had two major themes this expansion, menagerie and riffs, and neither of them landed at the level we were hoping for at launch. We’re buffing these Festival of Legends cards to give those themes a chance. We’re also buffing some older cards to help support the class generally. Shield Block is a card we now hope can become a definitional, powerful card that represents what Warrior is about. We’ll continue to monitor the class after these adjustments to determine if further changes are needed down the line.
Infinitize the Maxitude
- Old: Discover a spell. Finale: Return this to your hand at end of turn.
- New: Discover a spell. Reduce its Cost by (1). Finale: Return this to your hand at end of turn.
Audiosplitter
- Old: [3 Mana] 4 Attack, 3 Health
- New: [2 Mana] 3 Attack, 2 Health
Spitelash Siren
- Old: [5 Mana] 2 Attack, 6 Health
- New: [4 Mana] 2 Attack, 5 Health
Arcane Artificer
- Old: 1 Attack, 2 Health
- New: 1 Attack, 3 Health
Dev Comment: Mage got two major focuses in Festival of Legends: Light Show and DJ Manastorm. Audio Splitter and Infinitize the Maxitude can both fit into those decks, and others, so we hope these changes can help open up the class. As for the reversion to Spitelash Siren, what more can we say other than, “Naga, Spell, Naga...”
Stranglethorn Heart
- Old: [10 Mana]
- New: [8 Mana]
Halduron Brightwing
- Old: Battlecry: Give all Arcane spells in your deck Spell Damage +1.
- New: Battlecry: Give all Arcane spells in your hand and deck Spell Damage +1.
Dev Comment: Like Infinitize the Maxitude, Stranglethorn Heart is underperforming. We’re giving them both buffs because we want these Legendary spells to feel better to open and play. We’re also buffing Halduron to give some help to the Arcane Hunter package that has never had a chance to shine.
Jazz Bass
- Old: 2 Attack, 2 Durability
- New: 3 Attack, 2 Durability
Altered Chord
- Old: Lifesteal. Deal 5 damage to a minion. Costs (3) less if you’re Overloaded.
- New: Lifesteal. Deal 6 damage to a minion. Costs (3) less if you’re Overloaded.
Flow Rider
- Old: [2 Mana] 3 Attack, 2 Health
- New: [1 Mana] 2 Attack, 1 Health
Lightning Storm
- Old: Overload (2)
- New: Overload (1)
Dev Comment: The new Overload Shaman deck has not performed where we wanted or expected it to, so we’re giving it help with all these changes. This change to Lightning Storm also puts it better in line with the other current 3-4 Cost AoE spells.
Crescendo
- Old: [3 Mana]
- New: [2 Mana]
Crazed Conductor
- Old: [5 Mana] 4 Attack, 5 Health
- New: [4 Mana] 3 Attack, 4 Health
Siphon Soul
- Old: [5 Mana]
- New: [4 Mana]
Dev Comment: Warlock is one of the weakest classes in the game right now, so we’re giving it some buffs to its new Fatigue package. We’re also bumping up Siphon Soul, which we think should help the class a little more generally.
Record Scratcher
- Old: 2 Attack, 2 Durability
- New: 3 Attack, 2 Durability
MC Blingtron
- Old: 3 Attack, 4 Health
- New: 5 Attack, 5 Health
Dev Comment: Rogue has some good decks right now, especially at higher levels. We didn’t want to further strengthen those existing decks, but we did want to give them some more options from their Festival of Legends set.
Holy Nova
- Old: [4 Mana] Deal 2 damage to all enemies. Restore 2 Health to all friendly characters.
- New: [3 Mana] Deal 2 damage to all enemy minions. Restore 2 Health to all friendly characters.
Dev Comment: Right now, Priest has some powerful aggressive strategies. This adjustment is to make its other decks—control and Overheal—more enticing. While some players were hoping for more Overheal support in this patch, Overheal is an evergreen mechanic that we hope and expect to evolve over time, including through additional future card drops, instead of just adjustments to our first batch.
Kiri, Chosen of Elune
- Old: [4 Mana]
- New: [3 Mana]
Death Blossom Whomper
- Old: [6 Mana] 7 Attack, 6 Health
- New: [5 Mana] 6 Attack, 5 Health
Dev Comment: Druid is one of the classes that has seen a lot of new Festival of Legends cards see play, and we’re pretty happy with where its expansion set has landed. We’re taking this opportunity to set a higher bar for the Core Set and to encourage more of the cool Deathrattle support the class got from Murder at Castle Nathria.
Battlegrounds Updates
Armor Adjustments
- Chenvaala, C’Thun, Ini Stormcoil, Lady Vashj, Lord Jaraxxus, Millificent Manastorm, and Patches the Pirate all now have 5 Armor at lower ranks, but their Armor did not change at higher ranks.
- Silas Darkmoon now has 7 Armor at higher ranks, but his Armor has been increased to 12 Armor at lower ranks.
- Hesitbaron Togwaggle now has 10 Armor.
- Aranna Starseeker now has 10 Armor at higher ranks, but her Armor has been increased to 14 at lower ranks.
- Tess Greymane now has 12 Armor at higher ranks, but her Armor has been increased to 18 at lower ranks.
- Teron Gorefiend now has 10 Armor at lower ranks and 15 Armor at higher ranks.
- Silas Darkmoon now has 12 Armor at lower ranks, but his Armor has been decreased to 7 at higher ranks.
- Infinite Toki now has 13 Armor.
- Aranna Starseeker now has 14 Armor at lower ranks, but her Armor has been reduced to 10 at higher ranks.
- Captain Hooktusk, Vol’jin, and Xyrella now have 15 Armor at lower ranks, but their Armor did not change at higher ranks.
- Tavish Stormpike now has 15 Armor at higher ranks, but his Armor did not change at lower ranks.
- Tamsin Roame now has 16 Armor.
- Queen Wagtoggle now has 16 Armor at lower ranks, but her Armor did not change at higher ranks.
- Illidan Stormrage now has 17 Armor.
- Zephrys, the Great now has 18 Armor at lower ranks and 13 Armor at higher ranks.
- Tess Greymane now has 18 Armor at lower ranks, but had her Armor reduced to 12 at higher ranks.
- Deathwing now has 18 Armor at lower ranks and 14 Armor at higher ranks.
- Ozumat now has 19 Armor.
- Lord Barov now has 19 Armor at lower ranks, but his Armor did not change at higher ranks.
- Kurtrus Ashfallen now has 20 Armor at lower ranks and 15 Armor at higher ranks.
Note: Aranna Starseeker, Silas Darkmoon, and Tess Greymane now has less Armor at higher ranks, but more Armor at lower ranks.
Buddy Updates
Dev Comment: This is our last expected patch of this Buddies meta. Battlegrounds Season 4 is coming soon with Patch 26.2. When it does, Buddies will be removed again to make room for a massive minion shakeup. But don’t worry, we’ll see our Buddies again one day. For now, hang tight. Season 4 details are right around the corner!
Bilgewater Mogul (Trade Prince Gallywix’s Buddy)
- Old: [Tavern Tier 3]
- New: [Tavern Tier 4]
Magnus Manastorm (Millhouse Manastorm’s Buddy)
- Old: [Tavern Tier 4]
- New: [Tavern Tier 5]
Nightmare Ectoplasm (Mutanus the Devourer’s Buddy)
- Old: [Tavern Tier 4] 4 Attack, 3 Health. When you ‘Devour’ this, spit its stats onto 2 extra minions.
- New: [Tavern Tier 3] 5 Attack, 4 Health. When you ‘Devour’ this, spit its state onto 1 extra minion.
And the quest gained from Shady Aristocrat (Sire Denathrius’s Buddy) has again been made harder to complete.
Duels Updates
Card Pool Updates
- Sister Svalna, Linecracker, Clockwork Automaton, Elwynn Boar, and Edwin VanCleef have been banned from the eligible card pools.
Hero Power Updates
No Guts, No Glory (Warrior)
- Old: [1 Mana]
- New: [2 Mana]
Lichborne Might (Death Knight – Sai Shadowstorm)
- Old: [1 Mana]
- New: [2 Mana]
Warmaster’s Frenzy (Neutral – Drek’Thar)
- Old: [1 Mana]
- New: [2 Mana]
Signature Treasure Updates
Devout Blessing
- Old: Add a copy of each Deathrattle minion that died this game to your hand. Allied: Priest.
- New: Add a copy of each friendly Deathrattle minion that died after your last turn to your hand. Allied: Priest
Ace in the Hole
- Old: [2 Mana]
- New: [3 Mana]
Moonbeast
- Old: [3 Mana] At the end of your turn, add a random Eclipse spell to your hand. Your Eclipse spells cost (0).
- New: [4 Mana] At the end of your turn, add both Eclipse spells to your hand. Your Eclipse spells cost (0).
Collector’s Ire
- Old: [7 Mana]
- New: [6 Mana]
Gift of the Old Gods
- Old: [4 Mana]
- New: [3 Mana]
Reno’s Crafty Lasso
- Old: 3 Attack, 2 Durability
- New: 2 Attack, 3 Durability
Sr. Excavator
- Old: [6 Mana] Battlecry: Draw 2 cards. Any minions you draw cost (2) less.
- New: [5 Mana] Battlecry: Draw 3 cards. Any minions your draw cost (2) less.
Runed Soulblade
- Old: [4 Mana]
- New: [3 Mana]
Treasure Pool Updates
- Ancient Reflections, Bag of Holding, and Mask of Mimicry have been temporarily removed from all Treasure Pools.
- Royal Gift and Location, Location, Location have been moved to Treasure Pool 2.
Passive Treasure Updates
Eerie Stone
- Old: After you destroy a minion with a Shadow spell, add a copy of that minion to your hand. Reduce its Cost by (2).
- New: After you destroy an enemy minion with a Shadow spell, add a copy of that minion to your hand. It costs (2) less.
Brittle Bones
- Old: After you destroy an enemy minion with a spell, summon a Volatile Skeleton.
- New: After you cast a spell that kills an enemy, summon a 2/2 Volatile Skeleton.
Avenging Armaments
- Old: After a friendly minion loses its Divine Shield, give it +2/+2.
- New: After a friendly minion loses its Divine Shield, give it +2/+1.
Righteous Reserves
- Old: After you play a minion with Divine Shield, give a random friendly minion Divine Shield.
- New: After you play your first Divine Shield minion each turn, give a random friendly minion Divine Shield.
Mummy Magic
- Old: After you play a Deathrattle minion, give it Reborn.
- New: After you play your first Deathrattle minion each turn, give it Reborn.
Endurance Training
- Old: Your Taunt minions cost (3) less, but not less than (2).
- New: Your Taunt minions cost (2) less, but not less than (2).
Arctic Armor
- Old: After the first time you Freeze an enemy each turn, gain 1 Armor.
- New: After the first time you Freeze an enemy each turn, gain 2 Armor.
Edge of Dredge
- Old: After you Dredge, draw a card and shuffle your deck.
- New: After the first time you Dredge each turn, draw a card.
Unholy Gift
- Old: At the start of the game, shuffle 5 Death Knight cards into your deck.
- New: At the start of the game, shuffle 5 Lich King cards into your deck.
- Dev Comment: Unholy Gift and Rune Helmet now use the updated version of Obliterate.
Bug Fixes and Game Improvements
- [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Arcanite Ripper’s effect was not improving when damage and healing occurred at the same time (such as hitting yourself with Cheaty Anklebiter’s effect).
- [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Screaming Banshee did not work property when healing and taking damage at the same time (such as while attacking your Corrupted Ashbringer into an enemy minion).
- [Duels] Added missing Festival of Legends and Rastakhan’s Rumble cards to Discover pools.
- [Duels] Fixed a bug where one version of Crimson Clergy was banned while the other version was not.
- [Collection] Corrected in-collection “how to obtain” descriptions for various products.
- [Progression] Fixed a bug where the first phase of the *Melomaniacal Laughter* achievement granted Battlegrounds Track XP instead of Rewards XP.
- [Localization] Fixed various localization issues.
Ty for letting kingsbane,neptulon the 0 mana secret shit mage deck untouched as always so much fun in that mode
good,those people sucked
The fact that they slipped this change into the game without refunding every single card that discovers shows they don't want people to even know it happened. Because it's indisputably a nerf to cards like Frost Strike, Hematurge, Necrotic Mortician, Amalgam of the Deep, Nerubian Vizier, Paparazzi, Hipster, and Ghost Writer.
How is the average player supposed to even KNOW the mechanics for discover have massively changed?
It also doesn't even make sense. I don't even think they thought through the ramifications long term of this, it's just a slap dash fix to try and weaken DK when they should have been weakening the cards themselves. (Oh that's right, might have to refund in that case)
They have now instituted two shadow changes with discover as nerfs that were never communicated in game:
1. Discovering DK cards can't discover triple runes
2. Cards cannot discover themselves
Why should discover be like this? Because you "shouldn't be able to get extra versions of those powerful cards"? Ok, but why can you discover extra legendaries of cards you included in your deck normally. Why are extra DH relics allowed to be discovered? And yet certain other cards are banned from discover pools like, say, the second Cthun. They need serious consistency on the design here and it seems like they're going in the other direction.
I wish one day discover and random generation is based on card rarity! atm it has no value at all other than how much dust it costs to craft. But imagine just like in packs the odds of finding a legendary from a discover or random generation is 1 in 40, while rare is 1 in 5 , etc....
I think card rarity only kicks in Arena draft (or is that not a thing as well?) but it should be ! It will make the game less random and meaningful, and lazy card designer team will actually have to use some brain cells before deciding which gem to give each card.
I dont like shadow nerfs either but I disagree with you on one point. Discover not being able to discover themselves is one of the good things they have introduced. While DK change is a nerf to one class, I wish they coded it in a way that you cannot discover from runes you dont own which would make more sense, but why shouldnt u discover a triple rune if thats your gameplan when you built the deck with triple rune? its powerful but again if they introduced legendary being 1 out of 40, well if you're lucky to find another copy of ur triple rune legendary good for you
Personally I think legendaries should have 50% occurrence penalty on discovers, due to the 1/deck inclusion rule vs 2 of all other cards.
But then you don't get so many "lol saved by random card" youtube clips that Hearthstone has been pandering to in design for years.
I have said it for years now. they need to stop with all this gameplay patchwork and reboot the entire game by redesigning it.
they have the experience and the data now, they should take a hard a look at what works, what doesnt work, what set of internal rules they need to implement on how designing future cards, how to approach secrets, weapons, charges, discovery,etc, what needs to be added, removed or changed, what new twists they can add to the core formula of the game, so it can remain fresh the whole time. also RNG should not be the lazy de facto equalizer for the impact of the cards which they design, it should only be there to spice up the game experience.
Battlegrounds is the most popular mode right now because multiple aspects of its gameplay can be tweaked and new stuff can be introduced in every season without breaking its functionality. you can change the armor, you can change the hero ability, you can change the minions, you can ban heroes, you can add companions, new heroes or minions, and so on. This continuous array of changes has helped the mode to remain so fresh and interesting.
On the other hand, the main mode has become static and stale despite adding overpriced cards every two months. the new cards end up creating broken metas. then we have to wait for the delayed fixes, and when the game starts becoming balanced and interesting, the next cards arrive. rinse and repeat. players are fed up with this situation and it screams that it is time for Blizzard to do to Hearthstone, what they did with Overwatch. reboot it. otherwise, there could as well call the game Battlegrounds.
Couldn't agree more. Hopefully Hearthstone 2.0 is on the horizon.
"they have the experience"
The unfortunate reality is that they don't. The people who had the experience have all left the company.
Despite the huge patch of buffs and nerfs, nothing really changes on high level view of classes rankings lol… all classes remain the same where they are at on hsreplay. Paladin, DK, DH stay on top and Warlock, Mage, Warrior stay in the bottom.
I guess we should be looking forward to another balance patch in next 2 weeks, they need to use stronger nerf/buff balance patch instead of just a big hotfix patch (which they only changed the numbers like mana cost and stats…)
This patch was pretty light on nerfs and a quick fix to problematic cards from the new xpac drop
I've always felt that all Discover mechanics should limit the discover pool to cards NOT in your starting deck and then further limit you to 2x non-legendary cards and 1x legendary card (as would be the case if you'd opted to have them in your starting deck).
Yikes this just feels like a sloppy bandaid to the DK mess. It doesn't make any sense to players who don't read patch notes either, it's very unintuitive. People will be running discover cards in DK wondering why the hell they can't ever discover certain cards, there is literally no in-game text or explanation that tells them why they can't, hell they might even submit bug reports saying discover is broken in the class.
The concept of runes was cool at first but it's quickly been shown in only two expansions how it limits the class so much in terms of card releases and gameplay because you only have so many cards you can print for the class per expansion. They printed a triple rune legendary spell and the only way to use it meaningfully is to make half your deck discover cards to gain access to rune-locked cards that can spend corpses, talk about fucking dreadful design. Feels like we're just going to be playing against core set DK for the rest of time.
The runes mechanic I think was dumb from the start. Like they were trying to cram 3 classes into one and now they're just stuck with it forever. It's a balancing nightmare. 3 rune classes will always be better than hybrid unless they start printing some extremely good triple rune cards, because you currently pick which 3 rune you want by your deck type (control - 3 red, aggro - 3 green, midrange/burn 3 blue) since the 3 rune cards are so crucial to those archetype identities.
Now every card they add has to fit into those archetypes and be weighed against whether it could be included in a competing archetype and make it too strong. Construct quarter should be a green rune card 100% and it wouldn't have had to be nerfed twice, but because then no one would use it (because green isn't working right now) they let every spec use it and it broke the game.
It's going to be unsustainable for the game going forward and it's only been 2 sets worth of cards for DK. It's going to require a massive rework and I don't think the talent currently working there is good enough to pull it off.
Reading the comments so many people guessing Paladin to be dominant after the patch, thats so strange paladin is one of the worst classes imo it´s extremely predictable, also basically The Countess + 29 cards , draw her and pray for the best because you almost always gonna be in a losing spot at this point.
Played more than 50 games yesterday and i have faced a total of 0 Paladin lol
HSreplay's decision to sequester the real data of the game behind a paywall has ruined most of these balance discussions. If you look at the site, it purports that Paladin has one of the best winrates, but it's only at the lowest ranks, and their data gathering mechanisms are beyond suspect at this point after Blizzard reworked the ranking system.
In April I easily got to legend with triple Blood DK and play only four types of opponent - Blood DK, Frost DK, Relics DH, and Outcast DH. Those are the only four classes being played at high ranks, with the occasional Paladin and Jailer Druid.
Since most people aren't dumb enough to pay HSreplay, they simply look at the stats available to them, which say Paladin is great. That's why you get this opinion leaking into the discourse, when Paladin has been a dumpster class for years.
There's also the fact that most players aren't playing at Legend - they're Silver-Gold, where noobstomper decks like Pure Paladin are completely dominant due to how they punish the unrefined jank and questionable deck piloting that flourishes there. To them, Paladin is great, not because some site said so, but because they've been losing to it for the past 2 weeks.
But the ranks don't matter anymore for matchmaking - the hidden MMR does. Rank might as well be meaningless outside legend. That's why HSReplay's data is so shoddy at this point.
No balance changes to arena, Rip.
When I read the patch notes teaser, I knew this was going to be one of the worst and most idiotic patches they've ever done with the sheer number of buffs and lack of nerfs. I still had a little bit of hope that the big DK change wasnt going to be stupid, but man oh man, they did the worst possible change. They couldve easily fixed this by making it so you couldn't discover cards from runes you dont have at least 1 of. Then, you would actually get an incentive to not just run all 3 of one rune and rainbow DK wouldn't have to suffer. The power level of all the cards in the game is so insane that you have to run triple rune cards in every DK deck, and one of the saving graces of rainbow DK was that you could still get those, albeit with extra steps in a balanced way. Now this change makes the most played DK decks like .5% worse, but completely butchers rainbow DK which of course is the most fun one. Leave it to Blizzard.