Patch 17.4.1 - Twin Slice Nerf - Battlegrounds Balance Changes
In a surprise move Blizzard sent some patch notes out today for a Patch launching tomorrow, June 18th. It includes several Battlegrounds Balance changes as well as a notable change to Twin Slice in the normal game. It will now cost 1 Mana for both charges, but increase attack by 2 instead of 1!
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We’re also excited to share that we’ll be rolling out a Battlegrounds balance patch tomorrow (June 18), along with a few bug fixes and a change to Twin Slice which you can read about below.
Card Update
Twin Slice
- Old: [Cost 0] Give your hero +1 Attack this turn. Add 'Second Slice' to your hand → New: [Cost 1] Give your hero +2 Attack this turn. Add ‘Second Slice’ to your hand.
Second Slice
- Old: [Cost 0] Give your hero +1 Attack this turn. → New: [Cost 1] Give your hero +2 Attack this turn.
Golden Twin Slice will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks after the 17.4.1 patch goes live.
Battlegrounds Updates
HEROES
Lord Jaraxxus
- Bloodfury
- Old: [Cost 2] → New: [Cost 1]
Reno Jackson
- Gonna Be Rich!
- Old: [Cost 3] → New: [Cost 2]
Millificient Manastorm
- Tinker
- Old: [Passive] Mechs in Bob's Tavern have +2 Attack. → New: [Passive] Mechs in Bob's Tavern have +1/+1.
Maiev Shadowsong
- Imprison
- Dormant minions no longer reduce the number of minions you see when refreshing Bob’s Tavern (Unless you’re at Tier 6 and have 2 Dormant minions in play, then it will reduce by 1).
MINIONS
Scavenging Hyena
- Old: [Tier 2, Beast] → New: [Tier 1, Beast]
Rabid Saurolisk
- Old: [Tier 1, Beast] 3 Attack, 1 Health → New: [Tier 2, Beast] 3 Attack, 2 Health.
Monstrous Macaw
- Old: [Tier 2, Beast] → New: [Tier 3, Beast]
Battlegrounds Bug Fixes
- Fixed two separate issues that caused the Hero Powers for Lady Vashj and Maiev Shadowsong to trigger unintended effects in the shop phase.
- Fixed an issue where the Deathrattle for Sneed's Old Shredder was not summoning newly added Legendary minions.
Same.... we're doomed
So i got the legendary quest a lil late and had already acomplished Chapter 1 of the Story. What do i need to do now?
Twin slice nerf is aimed to stop Altruis bullshit turns when the DH comes back from the dead so that's a great change. Always feels bad when they go skull play nothing then go off next turn do 10 face damage and destroy your whole board
can the macaw lives if it dies then procs goldrin deathrattle?
Yes, Goldrin deathrattle saves macaw from death.
I'm glad they waited with the Twin Slice change until after the Grandmasters and the Jönköping tournament were over, cause this will change a lot, not just for Demon Hunter, but in general in the Meta.
Twin slice nerf was the worst one to touch in my opinion...they should have hit DH mid game if anything.
DH kept so many decks in check with a great early game and now the meta is fucked.
this coming from a guy that’s crafted every DH card for other decks.
Hard Disagree.
One issue with Twin Slice is that a lot of Demon Hunter cards are underpriced, but held in balance by the fact that you need to attack (typically, to use your hero-power) in order to get their full effect, which increases the cost to a normal level. Glaivebound Adept is the clearest example. Fire Elemental, but you have to attack first, so it cost 1 less.
So given GBA, Twin Slice was essentially two free mana: Old school, pre-nerf Innervate. With Cards like Battlefiend and Satyr Overseer, Twin Slice was massive mana acceleration.
BG was kinda broken after the last patch. It's good to see they responded so quickly. I still remember the dark times when Blizzard just ignored balance problems. I'm not satisfied with everything they do. But in this respect much has turned to the positive.
Make no mistake: this is the sledgehammer version of a nerf. They tried a bunch of minor adjustments and tweaks but they didn't do the job.
My guess is that they were seeing a significant drop off in the number of active players and they realized they needed to do something impactful.
Finally we're going to see Demon Hunter be balanced. Only took them 4 rounds of nerfs....
Battleground changes look on point too!
As to the "four rounds of nerfs," I mean, that's probably as many times as they've had to nerf Druid Basic/Classic cards.
Keeper of the Grove, Force of Nature, Ancient of Lore, Naturalize, Innervate, Wild Growth, Nourish.
DH feels worse, because the timeline is wicked compressed, and because the power level of cards in Hearthstone has been so inflated over the years, so that DH differences just got magnified.
I don't say this to contradict or anything, just seems like interesting context to me.
Yeah, if I remember correctly those nerfs you list span something like 2 years.
Honestly, I get the impression that Blizzard released Demon Hunter fully knowing it was broken, but they wanted people to be excited to play it. Now they are slowly walking it back because people are sick of it.
On the one hand it's really positive that Blizzard are so fast to fix things now, but the whole release of DH seems to contradict the old Blizzard mantra of not sacrificing the long term integrity of the product for fast profit.
Maybe. Flipside, if DH released and it was 2nd tier, it'd kind of be a flop.
One nice thing about set rotation is that it allows power creep, since you can make each set a little stronger than the one before, but it'll get removed and the power level resets. If the new set is worse than the old cards, folks won't play with the new stuff. By those same standards, DH kind of had to be a little more powerful than otherwise.
I also think some of it was actual mistakes. Everything with Outcast pretty much wound up being a lot too strong. Low-cost tempo/aggro DH could dump their hand fast enough that the restriction was pretty irrelevant.
Don't get me wrong, end capitalism, but DH power level seems like one of the least egregious things Blizzard has done for profit.
Awesome changes overall
Great changes
Blizzard has upped its game recently on balancing that I am actually considering playing more often. Well done I suppose, whatever happened to you guys that made you balance cards was a good thing lmao. Hope it happens with the next expansion with new ideas and heroes :O