Patch 18.0.2 - Balance Changes - Kael'thas, Illucia & Battlegrounds
Blizzard announced the first Balance changes for Scholomance Academy, including some Balance changes for Battlegrounds.
Tuesday Update: Patch now LIVE.
Quote from Alec DawsonMindrender Illucia was quite strong, stronger than what we want out of cards like Mindrender Illucia (Star Student Stelina, Glide, etc.). We expected players to continue to learn how to take advantage of her, especially in the early game.
Quote from Alec DawsonKael'thas Sunstrider created too many turns that didn't feel like they should be possible. This change is aimed at eliminating some of those non-games that could occur because of his ability.
Quote from BlizzardIn the coming days we’ll be releasing a balance patch that includes a slew of Battlegrounds updates, adjustments for two minions in Standard, and handful of bug fixes.
Standard Balance Updates
Kael’thas Sunstrider
- Old: Every third spell you cast each turn costs (0). → New: Every third spell you cast each turn costs (1).
Mindrender Illucia
- Old: [Cost 2] → New: [Cost 3]
Mindrender Illucia will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks after the 18.0.2 patch goes live.
Battlegrounds Minion Updates
- Gentle Megasaur has been removed from the Battlegrounds minion pool.
- Arcane Cannon has been removed from Battlegrounds minion pool.
Rabid Saurolisk
- Old: 3 Attack, 2 Health → New: 4 Attack, 2 Health
Rat Pack
- Old: [Tier 2] → New: [Tier 3]
Pack Leader
- Old: [Tier 3] → New: [Tier 2]
Monstrous Macaw
- Old: 3 Attack, 2 Health → New: 4 Attack, 3 Health
Primalfin Lookout
- Old: [Tier 5] → New: [Tier 4]
- Now only Discovers minions from your current Tavern Tier or below.
Nat Pagle, Extreme Angler
- Old: Overkill: Summon a 0/2 Treasure Chest. → New: After this attacks and kills a minion, add a random minion to your hand.
- Minions generated are from your Tavern Tier or below.
Mama Bear
- Old: [Tier 6] 5 Attack, 5 Health. Whenever you summon a Beast, give it +5/+5.→ New: [Tier 5] 4 Attack, 4 Health. Whenever you summon a Beast, give it +4/+4.
Goldrinn, the Great Wolf
- Old: Deathrattle: Give your Beasts +4/+4. → New: Deathrattle: Give your Beasts +5/+5.
Battlegrounds Hero Updates
- Lady Vashj has been removed from the Battlegrounds Hero pool.
Captain Eudora
- Buried Treasure
- Old: Dig for a Golden minion! (4 Digs left.) → New: Dig for a Golden minion! (5 Digs left.)
Reno Jackson
- Gonna Be Rich!
- Old: [Cost 2] → New: [Cost 0]
The Lich King
- Reborn Rites
- Old: [Cost 1] → New: [Cost 0]
Galakrond
- Galakrond’s Greed
- Now freezes the minion added to Bob’s Tavern.
Bugs Fixes & Game Improvements
- Fixed a visual bug with Archwitch Willow’s play animation.
- Fixed a bug where Southsea Strongarm was showing incorrect art.
- Fixed a bug where casting Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron with Rattlegore on board would cause the game to freeze.
- Fixed several technical bugs that would cause the game to crash.
Just played my first Galakrond 2.0 game. Doesn't feel quite there yet. I was able to squeak into 4th off an early many-adapt Amalgadon, but rolled 3 copies of Plants and no Divine Shield, so it was a bit meh.
The awkward thing with the new ability is that, while the one minion is frozen, if there's nothing else you want to buy, you're kind of out of luck, since you can't reroll. Felt like that came up a lot on my second trip up the chain of ascension. I mean, it's better than the old version, but I think it's still probably not very good. It could be better than I think, and maybe there's some good sequences to try with it,* but probably still a bottom-half hero, but maybe not dead last.
Lich King feels pretty good, though. The early game reborn can improve a start considerably, allowing better leveling.
* I'm partly wondering about HP on 1, 2, buying the *** card (or buying the ** and plus-ing up a *), then starting on an evolve chain to a 5 * or 6 * unit.
Never at any point did I feel a priest playing Illucia at 2 mana being unfair or ruined my experience.
On the other hand... Secret passage, Voracious reader and Argent Braggart are a whole other story.
I must agree with other people complaining here that priest, having at most a low tier 2 deck didn't deserve a nerf. I always feel like Priest get's hit by the ***er every single expansion for no reason (Extra arms....)
I just played DH against a priest. The key to beating a priest as DH is to go for a big Altruis combo. Somewhere midgame after waiting and waiting, played 2x Skull of Gul’dan, had Altruis in my hand and about to go for the Altruis combo… Priest plays Mindrender Illucia and drops my entire hand on board. What really pisses me off is that the Hearthstone team acknowledged some time ago that cards that pulls or messes with cards from an opponents hand ain’t fun (remember Dirty Rat). Meh they’ll never learn.
aww, poor dh. Hording all those cards so you can play one big stupid turn with altruis. You got what you deserved
The crashs on mobile version sucks.
You can also get lucky with Amalgadon adaptations or stick an Annoy-o-Module on it
Priest has 1 Tier 2 deck at the very bottom of the Tier 2 pool... let´s nerf a Priest card??? Wtf is this...
It's a good nerf. Priest is in an okay spot, not too powerful and not too weak, but Mindrender Illucia is a very oppressive card for any combo deck. It's too easy to play her on like 6 mana and remove a combo piece or two from you're opponent's hand and you're good.
Answers to combo decks are important, but this is too easy, too reliable and too backbreaking. After the nerf, Illucia will still be hands down the best anti-combo card in the game, but at least she'll be a bit slower, and the Priest player will have to more carefully think about when to play her, and it will give the combo decks a tiny bit of room to play around her.
The card is still insanely good, whenever (non-resurrect) Priest sees play, this card will be included 100% of the time.
Tess goes from one of the best heroes in murloc match up to the worst hero in the game, tess was good to turn the tables around in the top 3 scenario if both opponents run murlocs, easy to scale them and easy to give them the buffs they need, now since megasuar is gone not a lot of people will be running murlocs as it will be harder to win without divine shield poisonous meaning tess loses her value.
I'm not sure about that. You could be right, but it's not a particularly easy issue to predict.
The most consistently first place build after the nerf to Murlocs will likely be Dragons. An early Kalecgos into a board of 6 dragons and a Nadina is the kind of board only an extreme high-roll from the other tribes can beat. Unlike murlocs, which you can transition into in a single turn, Kalecgos dragons are slow to pick up, so as you mentioned, a Tess player won't be able to just switch to dragons two turns before the end of the game and take first place.
However, it will also be easier to transition into a powerful end-game build ahead of time. You'll have games where you face against an opponent with an early Kalecgos on turn 10, when they just got it, and you'll be able to turn that single game into an endgame build. Murlocs didn't work that way. They didn't have any cards that carried the composition as hard as Kalecgos does for dragons. Sure, Megasaur is such a card, but only an idiot would keep Megasaur on board when playing against Tess. The other cards don't come anywhere close to the power level of Kalecgos on their own. The best Murloc to get is Bagurgle, and that's still just a one time +/2+/2 buff to the board (or +4/+4 if you keep him on the board), Kalecgos is usually +4/+4 every turn, sometimes even more.
I imagine the ability to consistently get that one core piece will be incredibly good and work very well for Tess now that dragons won't just auto-lose to Murlocs.
They would never replace Gentle Megasaur with Scalelord. Scalelord is a dragon and buffs murlocs. So this card wouldn't be accessible in a game were you can't pick dragons. And it would be a dead card in a game were you can't pick murlocs. Thats against Blizzards philosophy. Thats why Wild Growth lets you draw a card when you use it at 10 mana. And changing Scalelord to a non dragon card wouldnt make sense either. Its more likely that they create a new murloc type card with a similiar effect. I think removing Gentle Megasaur is the best solution.
You're wrong, because some cards are tied to specific tribe, regardless of their own tribe (or lack of it). Magasaur is available only with murlocs, Arcane Cannon with pirates, Soul Juggler with demons, Pack Leader with beasts and so on.
Gentle Megasaur is a beast who buffs murlocs, and still shows up (well showed up) as long as murlocs were in the game even if beasts weren't in that game. What is your point?
Aggro aka braindead players was crying for nerf of mindreader , btw 1 mana up is not a nerf u can only destroy this card by puting it on high mana or just leave it. Priest is the class who can't play aggro decks , who can't win vs combo decks (before mindreader) , intersting nobody is calling to nerf secret passage 10 times more broken card than mindreader... HS comunity is realy one big shity crying comunity!!!
The funny thing is that they already, multiple times, had to correct cards that bring the cost of something to 0 by making it "1" or "but not less than 1". But they still had to make it like this and then correct it the way everyone knew they would eventually.
or this was the plan all along
the card wasn't broken for half a year it's been out, only became broken now, maybe they knew about it and were prepared to nerf it when this expansion hits
they didn't want to do this right when the expansion was released but wait a bit and see what happens
Honestly I can't see why Mindrender needed a nerf - so far she have just been in my hand the whole game - I havent encountered a single combo deck to disrupt and I didn't want to give my good hand to the opponent.
Try playing Wild. I won so many games I otherwise would loose horribly. Last night I stole Kingsbane with 8 attack and opponent insta conceded. I can beat quest Mage if they don't play the quest reward same turn or just take their giants. You always keep it against druid and just waste their innervates / blooms. Big Shamans? Well you win this matchup anyway, but this helps as well.
It has the dark side as well, sometimes you just have to sacrifice some good cards to just remove their win condition or slow them down. Some will concede anyway just when you play the card :D
Overall one of the coolest cards Priest ever got. It requires perfect timing to perform the best, but it is so nice. I got it golden and I'm keeping it even with this nerf.
Nice joke.
the funny thing with you muppets is that you bitch and moan about your combo being foiled or someone having a read on your hand that you mald about a disruption card and declare her braindead. it's a strong card--flat out can win games, duh. yet, you are fine with a 1 mana draw fuckin 5 cards or turn 3/4 flesh giants. bootlickers all of you. KEKW