19.2 Patch Notes - Balance Changes, Battlegrounds Update, Winter Veil & More!
Blizzard just published huge 19.2 patch notes containing balance changes, battlegrounds update, winter veil & more. Check it out!
Quote from BlizzardHappy Feast of Winter Veil! The 19.2 patch, releasing on December 15, welcomes the Old Gods to Battlegrounds as new Heroes along with 10 new minions and the addition of a limited-time Darkmoon Prizes system! The patch also features balance updates for Standard and Duels, a new Book of Heroes for both Garrosh and Uther, game improvements, and more!
As a thank you for being part of our community, we’re also rewarding all players with 5 Madness at the Darkmoon Faire card packs and 500 gold just for logging in after the 19.2 patch has been released!*
*All rewards will only be granted once per account. Must log in before January 18, 2021.
Battlegrounds Updates
With this new Battlegrounds season, we will be resetting all players' external rating to 0. For more information about our Battlegrounds rating system read our Dev Insights blog! Ratings will be reset once per expansion.
DARKMOON PRIZES
We’re introducing a new limited-time mechanic—Darkmoon Prizes! Every four turns you’ll Discover a Darkmoon Prize and add it to your hand. As the game progresses, you’ll be offered increasingly powerful Darkmoon Prizes to play with. From immediately impactful buffs to game-lasting effects, Darkmoon Prizes will add a new twist to every Battlegrounds match for the next two months!
Dev Comment: Only one player can Discover Ice Block on Prize Turn 3, but it can also be created by Big Winner.
NEW HEROES
C’Thun
- Saturday C’Thuns! [Costs 2]
- At end of turn, give a friendly minion +1/+1. Repeat 0 Times. (Upgrades after each use!)
N’Zoth
- Avatar of N’Zoth [Passive]
- Start the game with a 1/1 Fish that gains all your Deathrattles in combat.
Y’Shaarj
- Embrace your Rage [Costs 2]
- Start of Combat: Add a minion from your Tavern Tier to your warband. Keep it.
Players with Battlegrounds Perks will have early access to these new Heroes before they’re formally released on December 29.
HERO POOL UPDATES
- Galakrond has been temporarily removed from the Battlegrounds Hero Pool.
- Sir Finley Mrrgglton has returned to the Battlegrounds Hero Pool.
- The Great Akazamzarak has returned to the Battlegrounds Hero Pool.
- Competitive Spirit has been added to The Great Akazamzarak’s Secret pool.
Silas Darkmoon
- Come One, Come All!
- Increased overall chances of getting tickets after turn 1.
Zephrys, the Great
- Three Wishes
- Old: [Costs 4]
- New: [Costs 3]
Patches the Pirate
- Pirate Parrrrty!
- Old: [Costs 4]
- New: [Costs 3]
NEW MINIONS
Acolyte of C’Thun
- [Tier 1] 2 Attack, 2 Health
- Reborn. Taunt.
Tormented Ritualist
- [Tier 2] 2 Attack, 3 Health
- Taunt. Whenever this is attacked, give adjacent minions +1/+1.
Warden of Old
- [Tier 3] 3 Attack, 3 Health
- Deathrattle: Add a Gold Coin to your hand.
Arm of the Empire
- [Tier 3] 4 Attack, 5 Health
- Whenever a friendly Taunt minion is attacked, give it +3 Attack.
Bigfernal
- [Tier 4, Demon] 4 Attack, 4 Health
- After you summon a Demon, gain +1/+1 permanently.
Qiraji Harbinger
- [Tier 4] 5 Attack, 5 Health
- After a friendly minion with Taunt dies, give its neighbors +2/+2.
Champion of Y’Shaarj
- [Tier 4] 2 Attack, 2 Health
- Whenever a friendly Taunt minion is attacked, gain +1/+1 permanently.
Faceless Taverngoer
- [Tier 5] 4 Attack, 4 Health
- Battlecry: Choose a minion in Bob’s Tavern. Transform into a plain copy of it.
Mythrax, the Unraveler
- [Tier 5] 4 Attack, 4 Health
- At the end of your turn, gain +1/+2 for each minion type you control.
Elistra the Immortal
- [Tier 6] 7 Attack, 7 Health
- Divine Shield. Reborn. Whenever a friendly Taunt minion is attacked, this gets attacked instead.
MINION POOL UPDATES
- Righteous Protector has been removed from the Battlegrounds minion pool.
- The Beast has been removed from the Battlegrounds minion pool.
- Crowd Favorite has been removed from the Battlegrounds minion pool.
- Shifter Zerus has been removed from the Battlegrounds minion pool.
Standard Balance Updates
Blade Dance
- Old: [Costs 2]
- New: [Costs 3]
Shardshatter Mystic
- Old: [Costs 3]
- New: [Costs 4]
Dreadlord’s Bite
- Old: 3 Attack, 2 Durability
- New: 2 Attack, 2 Durability
Dinotamer Brann
- Old: [Costs 7]
- New: [Costs 8]
Voracious Reader
- Old: [Costs 2]
- New: [Costs 3]
Lorekeeper Polkelt
- Old: [Costs 4]
- New: [Costs 5]
All craftable cards listed above will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the 19.2 patch goes live.
Duels Balance Updates
- Reduced the number of unique Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Epic cards required for unlocking Hero Power #2 for each class from 10 to 5.
- Reduced the number of unique Madness at the Darkmoon Faire cards required for unlocking Signature Treasure #2 for each class from 100 to 90.
- Reduced the number of unique Scholomance Academy Epic cards required for unlocking Signature Treasure #3 for each class from 20 to 15.
- Updated wording of criteria for Hero Powers and Signature Treasures to better reflect unlock requirements.
Connections
- Removed Battlecry from Shadowshell Informant.
Secret Studies
- Old: [Costs 2]
- New: [Costs 1]
Killmox the Banished One
- Old: Rush. Lifesteal. This minion has +2/+2 for each card you discarded this game. If this minion is discarded, return it to your hand.
- New: Rush. Lifesteal. This minion has +1/+1 for each card you discarded this game. If this minion is discarded, return it to your hand.
- Dev Comment: Turns out Killmox was a Killjoy…moved to +1/+1.
Mo’arg Outcast
- Old: [Costs 3]
- New: [Costs 4]
Gift of the Legion
- Old: [Costs 2]
- New: [Costs 3]
Herding Horn
- Old: [Costs 5]
- New: [Costs 4]
Drocomurchanicas
- Old: [Costs 5]
- New: [Costs 4]
Rewards & Progression Updates
We’re making several major changes to the new progression system in the 19.2 patch:
- Reducing the amount of experience needed to reach certain levels on the Rewards Track.
- Reduced total required XP for completing the Rewards Track by 37,000 XP.
- Adjusting a variety of Daily and Weekly Quests that feel unrewarding or too difficult.
- Removed ‘Finish an Arena run with 4 or more wins’ Quest.
- Removed ‘Play an Old God Legendary from the Darkmoon Faire 10 times’ Quest.
- Adjusted ‘Play 50 Corrupt cards’ Quest to now read ‘Play 30 Corrupt cards’.
- Adjusted ‘Win 7 games of Ranked Play mode’ to ‘Win 5 games of Ranked Play mode’.
- Adjusted ‘Finish in top 2 in Battlegrounds’ to ‘Finish in top 4 in Battlegrounds’
- Adjusted ‘Deal 2,000 damage to enemy minions in Battlegrounds’ to ‘Deal 1,500 damage to enemy minions in Battlegrounds’
- Adjusted ‘Play two 10 cost cards’ to ‘Play one 10 cost card’
- Adjusted ‘Play 20 Murlocs’ to ‘Play 10 Murlocs’
- Adjusted ‘Play 6 Weapons’ to ‘Play 4 Weapons’
- Adjusted all 800 XP Daily Quests to award 900 XP.
- Adjusted applicable quests to count progress from Tavern Brawls and Battlegrounds.
- Adding more rewards to certain levels of the Rewards Track and expanding the Rewards Track levels above level 50.
- Added 50 additional Gold each to levels 27 and 30. Players who hit these milestones before the 19.2 patch will be compensated in a future update.
- Expanded levels 51-150 to a maximum level of 350 and adjusted each level after level 50 to require 1/3 as much XP and reward 50 Gold.
For more, you can find our full update on the Rewards Track here. After these changes are implemented, your existing earned XP value will be retained, so upon your next login, you will likely see additional progress through multiple levels. Please ensure that you review your rewards after updating to the 19.2 patch to see what you can now claim.
Dev Comment: Removed quests will need to be rerolled or completed. For the quests that have their requirements reduced in 19.2, if you already have progress on that quest at or above the new quota to complete, the quest will not automatically complete. You’ll need to advance that quest requirement by one for it to complete.
Winter Veil Quests
Winter Veil is underway! Get into the holiday spirit by completing a Legendary Quest chain that rewards a total of 4 Madness at the Darkmoon Faire card packs! These two quests will appear one at a time on your Quest Log and will not override any of your other quests.
Book of Heroes Garrosh
Follow Garrosh’s journey to becoming the Warlord of the Warsong clan in the next installment of Hearthstone Book of Heroes! Defeating all 8 bosses in this linear adventure will reward 1 Warrior Pack, containing only Warrior cards from Standard!
Book of Heroes Uther
Then, on January 5, protect the weak, bring justice to the unjust, and vanquish evil! Defeating all 8 bosses in Uther’s Book of Heroes will reward 1 Paladin Pack, containing only Paladin cards from Standard! Dev Comment: The Achievement for completing Book of Heroes Uther is missing. This is a known issue that will be fixed in a future update.
Miscellaneous Updates & Game Improvements
- We’ve updated our minimum spec requirement for mobile devices to 2GB of memory. Mobile devices with fewer than 2GB will no longer be supported. Please see our recommended and minimum configurations for Hearthstone here for additional information.
- Fixed some slow animation issues with various minions in Battlegrounds, most notably when refreshing Bob's Tavern with Nomi, Kitchen Nightmare in play.
- Fixed a bug where locked mana crystals were not displaying correctly after disconnecting and reconnecting to a match.
- Fixed a bug where certain sound effects would continuously play after disconnecting and reconnecting to a match.
- Fixed a bug where Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate’s Wheel of Fate could disconnect players.
- Fixed a bug where Oh My Yogg would not properly generate spells created by Twinspells.
- Fixed a bug where the targeting arrow for Battlecry minions was not working properly on mobile devices.
- Fixed a bug where targeting arrows could appear on the Victory or Defeat screens.
For odd DH and rouge it could be a thing. I'm not so concerned about Paladin. He already has really good draw. Only time will tell ;)
Bigfernal works with the deathrattle summons right? I think Voidlord could be good with all the new taunt stuff :P
Hahaha, so Blizzard did manage to turn you folks around. I feel sorry all the f2p players.
Fine changes, but again - snoozefest warrior and puke paladin avoid nerfs.
But, please plays those "classes", because priest control is back on the menu for them. Thanks, blizz, finally priest may make a respectable tier 2 or higher (no sarcasm).
And why shifter zerus of all, what did it do wrong?
Great changes, just a little more push is needed to make this game perfect. There were plenty of ideas in Reddit, Blizzard can just pick one from those.
Nerfing Brann 3 Months before rotation. L O L
After 2 Years Blizzard realizes 7 Mana 10/14 Stats with 8/8 going face on turn 6 with coin is pretty powerfull
It's Blizzard's way of giving out dust as a Christmas gift. Since Highlander Hunter is not problematic and the card will rotate soon, then nobody will care if it gets nerfed. Could they have given free dust without nerfing Brann? Sure they could but we both know that's not how Blizzard works.
Seriously, I don't get these year-late nerfs. Do they honestly think the card is a problem in Wild?? A 1 mana discount on King Krush and a 2/4?
I don't think I've ever played a Reno Hunter in Wild.
imagine getting a reset when you are 500xp short of the prize... first you lost 150g now you loose 50g
IMO 19:00 CET as always
They disguised to 150 to 350 xD
it's the same quantity of gold, it's not a change at all, it's just for the feeling of the grind? don't get it
As someone who quit ranked, was Dinotamer Brann really a problem? From what i've seen DH and face hunter were the main problems, highlander didn't even get any new cards and it gets demolished by those fast decks.
Also Shadowshell Informant is now complete garbage if they just plainly removed the battlecry.
The face hunter and the highlander hunter are the same deck
Highlander Hunter just adopted some of the new secret cards that came out, made their curve way lower and more aggressive, and then usually could finish off their opponent pretty reliably with Dinotamer Brann. However, I think Dragonbane is the bigger problem card, personally.
Face Hunter got hit by the Voracious Reader nerf. Ideally, it should have a harder time of reloading, thus lowering their winrates. Honestly, Idk if aggro decks will continue to run Reader after the nerf, but that makes me happy. It gives control more room to breathe.
HL Hunter wasn't payed that much, but was actually the best deck on ladder (you can look it up) and was therefor very popular in the world championship
Raised my eyebrow over the Shadowshell nerf. God forbid rogue has a strategy besides "buff weapon" -> "hit face".
No, they've said that your existing quests will not update. But you can always reroll it.
If you have to nerf that many cards of a particular class, then maybe's there's a design flaw with the class and there needs to be more research done when adding cards for it.
I don't see the Reader nerf doing anything. People usually play it around turn 5 anyways.
Personally I hate cards like Dinotamer Brann. They have no unique identify of their own and it's pretty much just King Krush with an extra body. The same thing applied to that RR mage card that summoned Rag.
As for duels. The turtle nerf essentially removes an entire rogue archetype. Dunno why it was nerfed because it wasn't even a mid tier power/hero. Reminder: The problems are deathrattle hunter, ALL DHs, and discard warlock.
Killmox the Banished One needed a nerf, but even so, it's still a too strong card. It's so easy to get a handful of these in duels because of all the ways warlock has to duplicate or add copies to their hand. All this has done is removed it being a sticky win condition. It's still a full heal if the enemy doesn't have hard removal for it during their turn. Warlocks will still rely on Cthun and Tickatus long-term win conditions.
People still aren't going to use the secret hero power for mage. Mage secrets aren't that good compared to what the other hero power does. We saw with frostlich jaina how broken minion creation hero powers are, which is why mages will stick with that one, especially since it spawns one of the biggest snowball minions in the game. Being able to completely stop play of all 1 hp minions is EXTREMELY powerful, especially when it shuts down entire hero powers (turtle rogue and silverhand pally), and completely counters the bloated zombie passive.
Another case of having to nerf everything of DHs cause the Power level was put in too high. It's still going to be broken since treasures were only addressed and not the broken hero powers. DH has way too much damage generation from their hero powers. I don't think I've ever seen a DH pick the Moarg. The price increase of Gift of the Legion helps a bit, but it's still a broken card because of the outcast ability which allows a DH to play minion spam cards and hit you for mass face damage every turn.
The druid and paladin treasure buffs do nothing. Paladin has the worst treasures in game, all are do nothing mid range cards for archetypes that don't or barely exist with the current card set selection. Druid is forced to go spells or tokens and paladin has to use silver hands or sticky minions. Their hero powers are slow as hell and their treasures are just as slow compared to DHs, Discard locks, and DR hunters, who have ways to start making the board fat turn 1 and 2. Drocomurchanicas was never a serious choice for anyone, and the fact that there are so few card pools and card sets in duels makes it unviable. Beasts are just too slow and like with pally, there's just not enough viable beasts in Duels atm. Look at the treasures that got nerfed, those are all win conditions. All pally and druid have are minor effect or buff overtime treasures.
They intended to make class OP, so ppl 'll be playing it. Just like rito new champion release everytime, then nerfed into ground
Brann is more than King Krush with a body. You are able to pull off combos such as old brann + new Brann or Brann + Zola.
Different in wild at least.