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.
A lot of us did. Well make sure u do it this week too.
I'm all for giving Blizzard flak when they deserve it, but that bug has been in the game for a long time now, there's nothing wrong with them fixing it.
thats not true considering that quest wanst rollable before the barrens came out
how?
Pretty underwhelming nerfs tbh. Kibler mentioned a really cool nerf for Lunacy (transform into spells that cost 1-4 more). That would make the card much less consistent. Also, I don't understand how Oh My Yogg! and Spring Water didn't get nerfed. I'm afraid that meta will be quite the same...
For the overall meta good nerfs I think. I think the cost 1-4 more is a cool idea but it would be completely unplayable. In the last meta the exact problem with lunacy was that it was inconsistent. With this change it will be playable still, but much slower. It can be still good but I feel like whatever they do they completely kill the card. I agree that Spring Water is completely busted it should be either 5 mana overall or 1 mana refound per spell drawn. Oh my Yogg is hard to balance. You can't bring up the mana cost because if they play it from hand your opponent immediately knows which secret is that. Since the begining of the game Paladin secrets were always 1 mana that's the theme inside the class. Also if you change it to one less than the original spell is way too punnishing for your opponent 1 more is bad for you and there would be no point playing the card in the deck. This is the same if you change it to two mana, it costs too much for the effect. For mage counterspell costs 3 and completely shuts down the spell.
Good points. I agree that Oh My Yogg! is hard to nerf, but that card was a mistake in the first place imho. I've lost so many easily winnable games just to stuff like Apotheosis on one of opponents minions instead of Hysteria.
As for Deck of Lunacy, I think that a card like this should never be in a competitive deck. Perfect example is Renounce Darkness. Just a pure meme card, that doesn't have positive winrate and is only there for fun clown fiestas.
I called all the nerfs. Libram pally ain't going anywhere though. Worst case scenario is people replace penflinger. Lunacy mage ain't going anywhere. As I've said before, the discover pool atm is WAY to good for their cards, they have too much minion generation between Apex and Font of power. If Lunacy didn't exist, the deck was good enough on its own due to how broken a lot of mage damage spells are atm (1 mana 3 damage and freeze, 2 mana 2 damage discover a spell, apex blast dealing 5 damage and summoning 5 mana)
Also I like how they buffed elementals in BGs. Elementals are the only tribe that have infinite and easy to access to those buffs. A Molten Rock early can be impossible to deal with for everyone with how buff it can get. Gar and Rag are both infinite buffing cards by just playing normally. Not to mention that elementals can stay at tier 4 since mojordomo is there.
I've got a motto in bgs "Elementals or lose." Unless someone gets good taunt synergy, the person who gets the best elemental synergy wins. Dragons are garbage midgame and require their tier 5 legendary to stay competitive late game. Mechs have no endgame, murlocs require too much tavern luck or a hero power, pirates are closest to elementals, but they don't go up infinitely. Demons don't have much buffs, and rely on the early game too much, and getting the correct mid game infinite buffs. Beasts require a tier 5 legendary and too much RNG "what attacks what" luck midgame. Meanwhile, elementals have cleave in Wildfire, multiple 1/1 buff cards just for playing the tribe, that damn windfury with divine shield that everyone just buffs up, a 2 star infinite health buffer.
Also, I think blizz needs to remove the golden perk of discovering 1 tier higher and make it same tier. Would get rid of a lot of the high roller crap we see now.
Pen flinger fix is where it should be, the sword is where we expected, lunacy might be good enough to kill the card (doubt) but not enough to kill the archetype's oppressiveness, Post nerfs are fine I guess, and Jandice seems a bit overkill but I understand why they did it.
Im just glad they fixed the Oh My Yogg VFX bug.
Both Watch Post card is dead...
worst of all, Kargal is dead. Imagine the amount of people crafting him gold smashing their heads to the wall right now, for not getting refunded.
why would you craft a bad card in golden?
wasn't a bad legendary at all during week 1 of the expansion, nor is it a bad card all by itself...but the issue is he simply needs heavy support. so if they don't print more overtuned watch posts in the Miniset, we can pretty much dust him (and lose 1600 Dust or 1200 for regular one) Shit sucks, especially for people not investing much money into the game trying to manage their Dust economies.
Thank god. They nerfed every single combo and otk deck in exitence to force ppl to use board centric minion play. Then they print this shit.
I can't recall the last time I used steward of time for anything other than a dragon body. I do not like this change. Should have kept the stats.
BIG TRUE! I can't believe they thought It was okay to print them as "At the start of your turn"
Springwater should be either 5 mana or 4 mana refresh 1 mana crystal per spell drawn.
Pen Flinger - finally, that little dude was just dumb.
I feel like Mage and Paladin were basically untouched lol
I feel like Mage and
Paladinwere basically untouched lol