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.
Wouldn't it have been a better nerf if Jandice summoned 4 drops instead? Have a more mixed pool of stats and not have as much tempo + bounce value?
Welp. I dont see these changes affecting the meta much.
No minion mage is still very strong. Lunacy or not. I personally think refreshing spring water was the guilty card, not Lunacy.
Paladin is still going to rule. Might see a drop in secret pallyz but no change in rate of paladin play.
The watch post nerfs are just sad. Used to be useful cards, now chaff. I was running 2x of the 3posts as anti-agro tech, now Ill have to swap them out for better 3 drops that have a similar effect. Aggro gets slightly stronger. I wasnt playing the 2posts, and there is no replacing them, so I suspect it was just a cool card that is now gone for no good reason. (I dont think Wild is a good reason)
I would love a refund on my post legendary card, he is nerfed to hell now.
On the plus side so happy to see pen flinger nerfed. Probably the most significant change IMHO.
Long story short, I think you will continue to que into pally and mage 50+% of games.
The only way I can see the nerf to deck of Lunacy making a difference is that it changes when Incanters Flow can/should be played. If you drew both in the starting hand you would would probably play Lunacy on 2 and incanters the turn after (followed by a million free card draw...). With this change you might be tempted to play incanters flow on 2, but that potentially reduces the impact of Lunacy. I guess is also means 2 less cards can be changed by lunacy.
EIther way, I think the impact will be minimal, and the "fun-ness" of the card will remain low for the opponent, but what do I know...
As for pen flinger, I think it probably hits Rogue more than Paladin, particularly with the change to Jandice (which is probably fair given the variance now). Rogue decks are all about reach and the chip damage puts you in range for an 18 damage, taunt ignoring, turn 10. In contrast, Paladin often needs minions on board to trade (to generate librams), so the reach provided is slightly lower, and as a more minion based deck, often not required.
Well, Deck of Lunacy being 4 mana simply means now I don't have to wonder if I should coin it out or wait a couple turns to try and draw Font of Power or Incanter's Flow.
I don't think this will change a whole lot for that deck, and I'm happy about it. But if there are people that want to get their dust and jump off the bandwagon... I wouldn't mind.
y-yeah.... thanks blizzard, we all wanted that bug to be fixed....
I literally re-rolled it today for another win 5 games. Lucky me :-)
how?
phew. good thing they didn't nerf druids. will continue to be able to fill the board up on turn 2 with a coin.
Druid Winrate are one of the lowest in Duel. I think they are balancing off average winrate rather than highroll since consistency matter more than how 1-2 games feel when an opponent get lucky and do what their deck is suppose to.
I'm talking about regular games, not duels.
Jandice is SO broken atm, this card alone wins some matches on turn 5 just by playing it.
Nerf warrior please!
it seems what they nerfed for real are watchposts and pen flinger more than pala and mage
pen flinger is in many paladin lsits
Pen Flinger is in the highest winrate Paladin decks too, and Watchposts was super dominant in Wild/Standard. That said I think the sword losing one durability isn't going to lower Paladin 58% winrate esp when the competitions are getting nerfed.
Watchpost/Nerubian/Divine Favor Paladin was one of the strongest deck. Keep opponent hand full and constant refill.
Hey loser!
It wasn't meeheee...
As much as I loved using the RNG forsaken card, Deck of Lunacy, it massively broke the games balance. It still will. This card could cost 10 mana, and it'd still be played because cards like Springwater exist. And it doesn't even need to be Springwater, any card that draws you more cards, at a fraction of the price, is banana's in power level. And once your hand is full, you literally shit on them for 3 less mana a card.
If spell cards didn't have draw effects, Deck of Lunacy would be literal trash.
...I hate RNG, but man did it feel great, and still will, to break the game and get people to rage quit.
I hate lunacy mage as much as the next guy, but if you don't like RNG, you may be playing the wrong game.
.
Nerfs announced. Cool! Finally I have the last reason to retire from Constructed completely, maybe even abandon Hearthstone entirely since devs looks like the most incompetent people I've ever seen.
See y'all!