Balance Changes - Deck of Lunacy & More
Blizzard just announced the long awaited Balance Changes. Read the details below!
Quote from BlizzardThe 20.0.2 patch, which will release on April 13, includes balance updates across several modes and numerous bug fixes!
Standard Balance Updates
Deck of Lunacy
- Old: [Costs 2] → New: [Costs 4]
Dev Comment: Deck of Lunacy moves up to 4 mana, removing its ability to provide a game-warping effect on turn 1 or 2. When we create cards like Deck of Lunacy, we're aiming for an experience that lets you do wacky, over-the-top things at the cost of power. There's a large audience for that (Spell Mage's play-rate shows!), but Deck of Lunacy very clearly crosses the power threshold we set for these types of cards.
Sword of the Fallen
- Old: 1 Attack, 3 Durability → New: 1 Attack, 2 Durability
Dev Comment: Sword of the Fallen is not only powerful, but also creates early-game situations with too many Secrets in play. We're moving Sword of the Fallen down to 2 durability to reduce the overall value of the card and make those turns against 3-4 Secrets less common.
Jandice Barov
- Old: [Costs 5] → New: [Costs 6]
Dev Comment: Jandice Barov benefitted greatly from the Core Set refresh and the rotation of weaker 5-Cost minions. Looking ahead, we don't intend to dilute Jandice's pool of summoned minions and that's not something we'd want to rely on for her balance. With that in mind, we are nerfing Jandice Barov to 6 mana where her total stat output is much more appropriate.
Pen Flinger
- Old: Battlecry: Deal 1 damage. Spellburst: Return this to your hand. → New: Battlecry: Deal 1 damage to a minion. Spellburst: Return this to your hand.
Dev Comment: Pen Flinger equips some classes with large amounts of chip damage, whether it be to minions or to the opposing hero. This flexibility makes Pen Flinger an attractive option for many decks, but when that utility is combined with repetition it takes over the story of a match. Pen Flinger takes out your minions, might deal 10 damage to your face over multiple turns, and even had the gall to call you names throughout all of it. We're nerfing Pen Flinger to now only target minions, positioning it as a removal option rather than a dual-threat card.
Far Watch Post
- Old: 2 Attack, 4 Health → New: 2 Attack, 3 Health
Mor’shan Watch Post
- Old: 3 Attack, 5 Health → New: 3 Attack, 4 Health
Dev Comment: Watch Posts are meant to act as an interesting tech-package when dealing with certain gameplans. Currently though, they act as go-to options in many classes, sporting quite high winrates for disruption-based cards. In order to cut into their power, we're reducing the Health of both Far Watch Post and Mor'shan Watch Post. This change will make them easier to deal with on turns 2 + 3, lowering the investment barrier for removal to better match the options available on those early turns.
Battlegrounds Balance Updates
RETURNING HEROES
Queen Wagtoggle
- Wax Warband
- Old: Give a friendly minion of each minion type +2/+1 → New: Give a friendly minion of each minion type +1/+1.
Captain Hooktusk
- Trash for Treasure
- Old: Remove a friendly minion. Discover a random one from a Tavern Tier lower. → New: Remove a friendly minion. Choose one of two from a Tavern Tier lower to keep.
MINION UPDATES
Steward of Time
- Old: 3 Attack, 4 Health. When you sell this minion, give all minions in Bob’s Tavern +1/+1. → New: 3 Attack, 3 Health. When you sell this minion, give all minions in Bob’s Tavern +2/+1.
Pack Leader
- Old: 2 Attack, 3 Health → New: 3 Attack, 3 Health
Monstrous Macaw
- Old: 4 Attack, 3 Health → New: 5 Attack, 3 Health
Herald of Flame
- Old: 5 Attack, 6 Health → New: 6 Attack, 6 Health
Wildfire Elemental
- Old: 7 Attack, 3 Health → New: 7 Attack, 4 Health
Lieutenant Garr
- Old: 5 Attack, 1 Health → New: 8 Attack, 1 Health
Lil’ Rag
- Old: 4 Attack, 4 Health → New: 6 Attack, 6 Health
Duels Balance Updates
Ace in the Hole
- Old: [Costs 2] → New: [Costs 3]
Rally the Troops
- Old: After you play your first Battlecry card in a turn, draw a card. It costs (5) less. → New: After you play your first Battlecry card in a turn, draw a card. It costs (3) less.
Connections
- Old: [Passive] → New: [Costs 1]
Bug Fixes & Game Improvements
- Fixed a bug where Sunwell Initiate’s Divine Should could not be silenced.
- Fixed a bug where Shadowjeweler Hanar could Discover secrets from outside of Standard in Ranked Standard.
- Fixed a bug where the Battlecry for Reckless Apprentice would not apply the Freeze effect from Ice Walker.
- Fixed a bug where the Battlecry for Reckless Apprentice would still trigger if the Hero Power was disabled.
- Fixed a bug where playing Wildfire before Metamorphosis could cause your original Hero Power to gain an extra damage.
- Fixed a bug where Lakkari Felhound could discard newly drawn cards, such as when played in sequence with Hand of Gul’dan.
- Fixed a bug where Celestial Alignment would work inconsistently with cards that reduce mana costs, such as Librams or Cutting Class.
- Fixed a bug with Kazakus, Golem Shaper where the Firebloom ability could target the same minion twice.
- Fixed a visual bug where G’huun the Blood God would leave the blood drop mana cost icon behind when played.
- Fixed a bug where casting Twisting Nether into Oh My Yogg! would not allow for more cards to be played.
- Fixed a bug where the VFX for certain spells would continuously play after being transformed by Oh My Yogg!
- Fixed a bug where Pit Master would appear in Collection results when filtering for Nature cards.
- Fixed a bug where Holy Wrath was not tagged as a Holy spell.
- Fixed a bug where Dragon’s Pack had the Nature spell school tag. It is no longer part of a spell school.
- Fixed a Battlegrounds bug where Minions could show an outline of their Tavern Tier icon when played.
- Updated the appearance rate of cards in Arena to ensure class balance remains close to the ideal 50% win-rate. Specifically, the win-rate of Demon Hunter and Priest should now be decreased. The win-rate of Druid, Hunter, Rogue, and Shaman should now be increased.
- Removed Far Watch Post, Mor’Shan Watch Post, Crossroads Watch Post, and Kargal Battlescar from Arena.
- Fixed a bug where the Arena could fail to load properly for new players.
- Fixed a bug where some Boomsday puzzles were causing desync issues.
- Fixed a bug with the Achievement It’ll Take More Than That where credit could be granted without playing the Warrior class.
- Fixed a bug with the Achievement Barrens Neutral Collector where incorrect Collection quotas were listed.
- Fixed a bug with the Achievement Final Frontier where progress would not be credited from discounted minions.
- Fixed a bug with the Achievement Do it for the Vines where Dual-Class cards would not count as progress.
- Fixed a visual bug where Achievement XP and end of match XP gains could show incorrect numbers but reward the correct amount of XP.
- Fixed a visual bug where, in some cases, XP gains benefitting from XP bonuses were not highlighting with a green font color.
- Fixed a visual bug where the Tavern Pass bonus XP displayed on the Achievement detail view would be incorrect.
- Fixed a bug where the mass disenchant preview would count some cards twice but would give the correct amount of dust when used.
- Fixed a bug where the disenchant button would glow regardless of whether there were extra cards to disenchant.
- Fixed a bug where some player ranks and rewards were not populating from the correct ladder on the friends list and elsewhere.
- Fixed a visual bug where names on the friends list could be overlapped by their rank, and where a friend’s rank would show even when they were offline.
- Fixed a bug where a star bonus would appear on the deck selection page for Legend ranks.
- Fixed a bug where an erroneous pop up would appear saying a Demon Hunter class pack was granted for completing the Ashes of Outland Prologue.
- Fixed a bug where the Hamuul Card Back would not show properly during pack opening.
- Fixed a bug where the Play button would always be highlighted in the main menu.
- Fixed a bug where players could become locked out from creating or deleting decks when they previously were not.
- Fixed a bug where “Click to Convert” would persist on decks regardless of what mode you’d swapped to.
- Fixed a bug where mousing over decks that are behind the “You have no Classic Decks. Go create one!” pane would show pop-up info.
- Fixed a bug where mousing over a Classic deck with the mode set to Casual would display a tooltip stating: “Not useable in Wild format”.
- Fixed a bug where players could re-roll into the Win 5 Games of Ranked Play Mode weekly quest after already completing it that week.
- Fixed a bug where the Sir Annoy-o Hero Skin, the Crossroads bundle, and the Barrens Tavern Pass were showing incorrect art in the purchase window.
- Fixed a grammatical error in the card text for Warsong Wrangler.
- Fixed various translation issues across several languages.
Not a hard Hit imo. I practiced DarkGlare this season and just reach Legend today with it.
Actual version (from tempostrom I believe) only play 1 Penflinger already, because of Tax Paladin and some other reason.
The flavor in Penflinger spellburst line is now literally true. He throwed so many pens at your face, but now he can't do it so he will go like "wAsn't Mee"
"hey loser!....hey loser"....hey loser"....."pen flinger report to the card balance office"...."IT WASNT ME!"
That’s a lot of squashed bugs. Glad they are finally taking care of all (or quite a big chunk) of them.
For everyone proclaiming this won’t change the winrate of Mage or Paladin, it will. It always does. I don’t understand how everyone always uses the same arguments, only to be proven wrong like 80% of the time.
Having to cast Lunacy on 4, or 3 with Coin, gives other decks, specifically Aggro decks, a vital turn to present a bigger board. 4-mana do nothing is devastating against Tempo decks. Turn 2 is fine to finger your bum, but you can’t do that turn 4.
Pen Flinger nerf hits Secret Libram Pally hard, for the simple reason that it loses its reach. That’s what made Libram Paladin so good; superb control tools WITH the ability to reach. As for the Sword, losing 1 durability doesn’t just mean it gets to cast one less Secret; it also means it thins out the deck less, in turn meaning Paladin has a bigger chance for dead draws. Furthermore, it means it can less consistently have Secrets in play to use cards that benefit from Secrets being in play.
I agree with the sentiment on the Posts, but a turn 2, or even turn 1, Watch Posts makes for an extremely shit experience. Same reason as to why Barnes got nerfed, and why Tickatus will most likely see a nerf too. Even though Tickatus is absolute garbage.
For once, kind people of the internet, let the meta settle and THEN call for nerfs. Increases in just 1 mana have proven to work in the past, always. As a last example, bumping Jandice to 6 doesn’t just mean it comes down a turn later; it also means Stepping it is less broken.
I think if the goal of the nerfs was to lower paladin and mage's combined presence to less than 50%, then the nerfs failed.
Both decks will be slightly worse, but not enough to push other decks above them IMHO.
And when it does, we’ll complain about those classes. The point of nerfs that have been done by the newer composition of Team 5 weren’t done with the objective to completely kill cards; it merely opens up the meta a bit for other classes to atleast be competitive a bit more. I don’t mind Paladin and Mage being the strongest classes; I just don’t like it when they’re so powerful that it surpresses other classes, like Warrior or Priest.
I’ve loved Spell Mage ever since Font of Power was introduced, but stopped playing it this expansion. These adjustments will not destroy the deck, nor should they. Give Warlock and Warrior a bump, and Priest and Druid will rise with them. A patch of 6 nerfs is really big, and it’ll do things to the meta we can’t predict, in my opinion. That was the stretch of my message: let’s just see how these do first, instead of jumping to conclusions because we’re so emotionally attached to power levels of certain cards.
deck of lunacy is already being play on turn 4 and pass turn in a lot of cases because they have 0 mana draw 2 cards. So i dont see a lot of changes. maybe the paladin nerf hurts, maybe but i will said that the weapon was not that problematic for give you 3 secrets but because i can give you 1 secret for free so you can curve your libram cards more easy. Now is still the same unless you proc the paladin spells every turn which you dont want to do most of the times. So i am not saying you are wrong or that "it will change nothing" but that both classes are kind of faaaaar ahead that others by a lot in value per mana cost by a lot.
About the last part: if you belive that Warrior or Priest can even see play them you are really naive because Priest is very slow for any of this soft nerfs makes any different. Rogue is not even a hard-played deck anymore even if is strong so It wont matter that they cut down their extra face damage. Mage still outvalue Priest and Warrior in the long game and Warlock still crush both decks because of Lord Jaraxxus. The only reason why Priest see tournament plays is because your opponent cant avoid play against priest with something that is not mage or warlock. A deck that does well against decks that you dont see on ladder that often (rogue for example) has not chance to scale in popularity.
Thing is the first week when people were scared to believe in Lunacy they were playing identical lists with it cut... and guess what... the win-rate was identical. YES, the meta has evolved since then but point is that Lunacy is not needed.
It did still need to be toned down to alleviate the feel-bad with it's absurd drawn win-rate, but Mage was not touched in reality from a power perspective. They totally dropped the ball here unless they already know Mage isn't a class to beat and the meta wasn't solved.
I get all of your points, I really do. But to me, it was more about Deck of Lunacy offering solutions to a deck that shouldn't have solutions for things like wide boards (apart from Flamestrike), combo potential and single big minions. Take away those solutions, and it'll struggle against decks like Druid. We already saw an uprising of decks like Poison Rogue and Face Hunter that could take down Mage, and now Mage will struggle even more. And that means the meta becomes more open to things like Control Warrior or some form of Ramp Druid.
The comments about Priest are faulty, plain and simple. It's a class that shows perspective in higher Legend ranks, where it was always more present. Just a difference in rank, if you think the class is useless.
If we go by the suggestions offered in this thread, RSW gets nerfed, and then what does Mage have? There's a thin line between nerfing playrate, and completely annihilating the class. Mind you, Mage also suffers from the bump in mana on Jandice.
You think Control Warrior (or Priest, Paladin or Shaman) has any chance of being a thing with Tickatus in the game and no actual counters for control decks? I would like that to be the case, but I'm afraid it will just be a Warlock meta which then pushes more Aggro players which makes for an overall bad experience.
I was getting a little tired of Rally the Troops giving most of your minions basically an Uninvoked Galakrond, the Nightmare Battlecry.
If the idea of Lunacy is to be just a wacky card, why didn't they just change it to "Random spells, they cost 3 less" (right now it is "random", but based on the original cost of the spell, I mean actual random), that way the mage player would have no control over what they get (and not get nagrand 50% of the time ffs) and this wouldn't require cutting the tempo by making it cost more.
Haha Rogue players. See ya! That's what you get for playing a garbage class.
I guess the message is to play aggro until Tickatus rotates or some other control class gets a hero card as powerful as Jaraxxus.
Warlock will not really struggle against aggro with it's 761671986341 control cards. he will lose from time to time with bad draw (like every other class anyway) but that's it.
I think he was trying to say "Jaraxxus beats any control deck currently" rather than "Aggro decks are good against warlock". Which is about right, but Ticketus deleting the opponent's deck and Y'shaarj giving (at most): two 0 mana 6/6s, a 0 mana 8/8 and 0 mana delete 6 minions, is also a big part of why no control deck can really stand against current warlock.
They "screw rogue so much" because the class gets absolutely loaded with a multitude of cheap and effective options which take players about 24 hours to exploit every single expansion.
Yeah they exploit them so bad they still have an exponentially lower win rate than pally and mage in high ranked ladder
I think lunacy was not nerfed as harshly as it should have been. This card should cost at least 5 mana. Even on turn 4 it will still provide a massive power swing. With the coin, you can cast it on turn 3. With enchanter's flow, it is still possible to cast it on turn 2 (with some luck,) and there are probably other means of cheating it out.