18.4 Patch Notes - Nerfs (Guardian Animals;Tortollan Pilgrim), Elementals in BG, Event & More!
Blizzard just announced "another" huge event and this is the patch notes part, where you can expect things like - Elementals in Battlegrounds, Card Changes & More!
Please be aware that we will be adding more details to this post.
Quote from BlizzardThe 18.4 patch marks the beginning of the Masquerade Ball limited-time event and includes a major Battlegrounds update that welcomes Elementals as a new minion type! Beyond that, we’ve got a new Hearthstone Book of Heroes featuring Rexxar, the return of Dual-Class Arena, Legendary Quests and rewards, new Tavern Brawls, and more!
Please note that mobile players may need to log-in again after updating to 18.4.
New Battlegrounds Heroes
Ragnaros the Firelord
- DIE, INSECTS! [Passive]
- After you kill 20 enemy minions, get Sulfuras.
- Sulfuras [Passive]
- At the end of your turn, give your left and right-most minions +4/+4.
Chenvaala
- Avalanche [Passive]
- After you play 3 Elementals, reduce the cost of upgrading Bob's Tavern by (2).
Rakanishu
- Tavern Lighting [Cost 2]
- Give a random friendly minion stats equal to your Tavern Tier.
Al'Akir the Windlord
- Swatting Insects [Passive]
- Start of Combat: Give your left-most minion Windfury, Divine Shield, and Taunt.
Starting September 28, the price of the Tavern Pass will be reduced for the remainder of the Scholomance Academy expansion cycle! Players with the Tavern Pass will have early access to these new Heroes before they are formally released on October 13.
New Battlegrounds Minions
Elementals will always be available in the minion pool until they join the rest of the shifting minion pool in a future update.
Sellemental
- [Tier 1, Elemental] 2 Attack, 2 Health
- When you sell this, add a 2/2 Elemental to your hand.
Refreshing Anomaly
- [Tier 1, Elemental] 1 Attack, 3 Health
- Battlecry: Your next refresh costs (0).
Party Elemental
- [Tier 2, Elemental] 2 Attack, 2 Health
- After you play an Elemental, give another friendly Elemental +1/+1.
Molten Rock
- [Tier 2, Elemental] 2 Attack, 3 Health
- Taunt. After you play an Elemental, gain +1 Health.
Stasis Elemental
- [Tier 3, Elemental] 4 Attack, 4 Health
- Battlecry: Add another random elemental to Bob's Tavern and freeze it.
Arcane Assistant
- [Tier 3, Elemental] 3 Attack, 2 Health
- Battlecry: Give your other Elementals +1/+1.
Crackling Cyclone
- [Tier 3, Elemental] 4 Attack, 1 Health
- Divine Shield. Windfury.
Whirlwind Tempest
- [Tier 4, Elemental] 6 Attack, 6 Health
- Your minions with Windfury have Mega-Windfury.
Wildfire Elemental
- [Tier 4, Elemental] 7 Attack, 3 Health
- After this attacks and kills a minion, deal excess damage to a random adjacent minion.
Deadly Spore
- [Tier 4] 1 Attack, 1 Health
- Poisonous.
Majordomo Executus
- [Tier 4] 6 Attack, 3 Health
- At the end of your turn, give your left-most minion +1 / +1 for each Elemental you played this turn.
Nomi, Kitchen Nightmare
- [Tier 5] 4 Attack, 4 Health
- After you play an Elemental, Elementals in Bob's Tavern have +1/+1 for the rest of the game.
Lil' Rag
- [Tier 5, Elemental] 4 Attack, 4 Health
- After you play an Elemental, give a random friendly minion stats equal to the Elementals tavern tier.
Tavern Tempest
- [Tier 5, Elemental] 4 Attack, 4 Health
- Battlecry: Add another random Elemental to your hand.
Lieutenant Garr
- [Tier 6, Elemental] 8 Attack, 1 Health
- Taunt. After you play an Elemental, gain +1 Health for each Elemental you have.
Gentle Djinni
- [Tier 6, Elemental] 6 Attack, 8 Health
- Taunt. Deathrattle: Summon another random Elemental and add a copy of it to your hand.
Battlegrounds Ratings Update
External Battlegrounds ratings will be reset for all players and a new progression system will be introduced. The new system is similar to the progression system players are familiar with from our constructed Ranked mode.
Players will see their rating reset to 0, and all new players will start with 0 rating. With every Top 4 placement, players will gain rating—up to 300 per win. A player's rating will never go below 0, and they cannot lose rating until they’ve climbed above 2000.
Here are the nuts and bolts of how the new system works:
- Between 2000 and 6000 rating, every 500 rating (2500, 3000, etc.) will act as a new rating floor where you cannot lose rating.
- Below 6500 rating, players will earn a small bonus to their rating gains at the end of each match, which will in turn make for a faster climb.
- Rating losses will remain consistent.
Matchmaking will now be done based on the player's invisible internal rating, which we’ve been tracking since Battlegrounds launched. Internal ratings for players will not be reset and will not be affected by the above modifications to external ratings. When your external rating is lower than your internal rating, you will gain rating faster. Read more about the ratings update in our Dev Insights blog!
Please note that your rating will not visibly reset until you've played at least one Battlegrounds game!
Card Balance Updates
Tortollan Pilgrim
- Old: Battlecry: Discover a copy of a spell in your deck and cast it with random targets. → New: Battlecry: Discover a spell in your deck and cast it with random targets.
Guardian Animals
- Old: [Cost 7] → New: [Cost 8]
Tortollan Pilgrim and Guardian Animals will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the 18.4 patch goes live.
Bug Fixes & Game Improvements
- Fixed a Battlegrounds bug where Micro Mummy would cause a crash when tripled. Micro Mummy has returned to the Battlegrounds minion pool.
- Collection manager pages can now be scrolled with a mouse wheel on Mac and PC.
- Galakrond will no longer lose its partially invoked status when being shuffled back into your deck from hand.
- The mana reduction from Nature Studies is now cleared if the spell is countered.
- Golden Sightless Watcher's history tile now correctly shows the gold/non-gold status of the discover options, rather than forcing them to all be gold.
- Mystical Mirage now restores your original hand correctly at the end of the turn when double cast from cards like Electra Stormsurge.
Dual-Class Arena
We’re giving all players one free Arena ticket to celebrate the return of Dual-Class Arena! When you start an Arena run during the Masquerade Ball event, you’ll choose a Hero before choosing a Hero Power from a different class. Card offerings will feature cards from BOTH classes, in addition to neutral cards!
October 7 – Masquerade Ball Tavern Brawl
Grab a costume, it’s time to dance! When you play a minion in this Tavern Brawl, it transforms into a minion that costs (2) more. When that minion dies, the original minion is revealed and re-joins the fight!
October 13 – Hearthstone Book of Heroes: Rexxar
Journey with Rexxar in the next installment of Hearthstone Book of Heroes and find true heroism in the heart of the wild! Defeating all 8 bosses in this linear adventure will reward 1 Hunter Pack, containing only Hunter cards from Standard!
October 14 – Boss Battle Royale 3 Tavern Brawl
Dress up as big bad bosses from past battles and crash the party! The Boss Battle Royale 3 Tavern Brawl features 10 playable bosses, each sporting a unique Hero Power.
Playable bosses:
- Dr. Boom
- Mother Sharaz
- White King
- Cenarius
- Baduu Prime
- Kriziki the Winged
- Lich Baz’hial
- Rotwing
- Hagatha the Vengeful
- Illidan Stormrage
Complete Legendary Quests
Starting September 29, players can complete a chain of Legendary Quests to earn a total of 9 card packs! Quests will be initially available on the following dates:
- September 29, 10:00 AM PT: Play Dual-Class Arena to earn 1 Scholomance Academy pack, 1 Ashes of Outland pack, and 1 Year of the Dragon pack.
- October 6, 10:00 AM PT: Play 50 cards in any mode to earn 1 Scholomance Academy pack, 1 Decent of Dragons pack, and 1 Year of the Dragon pack.
- October 13, 10:00 AM PT: Defeat Leoroxx in Hearthstone Book of Heroes: Rexxar to earn 1 Scholomance Academy pack, 1 Saviors of Uldum pack, and 1 Year of the Dragon pack.
Complete a Secret Quest
After a thorough examination of garments in our lost and found cupboard, Transfer Student has embarked on a laborious journey to find the perfect costume for the Masquerade Ball! We’ve identified an itinerary in the dormitory that outlines an intention to visit Dalaran, Uldum, Dragonblight, and the Black Temple. Scribbled on the back is mention of playing Rexxar’s tale in Hearthstone Book of Heroes, and at least one match in both Battlegrounds and Arena.
Retrace their steps and you’ll be rewarded with two golden copies of Transfer Student! Good luck!
What is the new mmr system of battlegrounds?
They """"""""nerfed"""""""" guardian animals??
In a class that ramp so fast that 1 turn doesnt change litterary anything?
Usually I would agree. I've played a decent amount of GA Maly druid and i can't stress enough how many times GA was good at 7 mana to stabilize while if it costed 8 i wouldn't be able to play it. I think it's a decent nerf that will definitely help remove the opressivness in that card. I'll Disenchant the copies as i think it's now a too slow card unfortunately
where is the patch?. i already restarted the client but there is no change at all
Edit, oh ok, is 29 september, not 28, i didnt read correctly, my bad
Rejoice, King Phaoris gets buffed in Druid!
Did they really killed Turtle Mage? I mean, that deck wasn't a problem. At least in standard. In wild we could agree that it was disgusting. But there are decks even more broken in Wild... And killing a fair deck in Standard for a deck in Wild... It just doesn't makes sense.
Blizzard really needs to do something for this. It can't be possible that because of a specific deck in wild, a card have to suffer a nerf also in standard. Just like with Zoo Warlock, which was disgusting in wild, but pretty ok in standard (except por some insane highrolls sometimes)
Yes that deck was not popular enough to be a problem but let's be fair, Blizzard would never let that style of gameplay exist for long. The fact that they tolerated it this long is quite surprising, I was expecting this nerf 2-3 weeks ago with Cabal Acolyte. Gameplay wise that deck has everything Blizzard hates in a deck, it had to go.
While turtle mage is a pretty high skill-gap deck, there is absolutely nothing fair about it. Its uninteractive and extremely toxic. Those kind of infinite loops are unhealthy for card games. Definitely a necessary change.
so all you can do to adress one card is to kill a class that was already so bad that it's best deck is tier 3 ?
If it wasn't a problem then it's fine it was abolished, yes?
Unless it wasn't actually fine.
It's not broken, but it's just bloody obnoxious to play against. You sit there and watch your opponent play solitaire. He either pulls together a win, or he doesn't. Hearthstone doesn't have enough burst in slower decks to justify it.
Kill a class? What in god's name are you talking about. This wasn't the best Mage deck, and the best Mage deck is tier 1. And it doesn't use Tortollan.
Great news. But Hearthstone like now is Battleground. Battleground is much more active than normal Hearthstone. It feels weird. The new team in charge in Battleground is much more active and efficient than Team 5.
I agree man, I just love the aspect of Battlegrounds having a new competition every round instead of the traditional HS.
Thats good
Ain't salty, BG is fun, I play it too, and that was a genuine question, but people make their own interpretations. I ain't even salty about that either. There's a thread for That.
I'd expect standard, being the main Purchase to get bit more attention, that's it. GA should've been nerfed 2 weeks ago, turtle I guess too, but I never had issues with it.
The time it takes to make battleground content is less than constructed though. They have to create art and code for 150+ cards every expansion, new mechanics and a PVE mode. And this is every 4 months with a monthly patch. It pretty frequent for the amount of work they put in. The problem is they never addressed Libram Paladin or Face Hunter and instead nerf decks they dislike (OTK/Ramp), rather than problematic meta decks.
While both game modes hold their competetive integrity, i feel that standard is a heck of a lot more fragile than battlegrounds. Card changes take time, and the designers dont just straight up ruin a card because a few people are unhappy about it. Like how everyone thought the mindrender nerf would do nothing to the card, but it completely changed how the card was used along with the flexibility of it. I just feel that because of how bg's is designed, with the whole tavern system and what not, its alot easier to find and rectify issues, because there isnt as much variance as to whats possible.
Well stated. Beginning to end.
This Tortollan nerf didn't change the combo version though?
EDIT: Oh nvm it discovers the spell, not a copy, so it's dead