Balance Changes Coming Tomorrow - 8 Changes In Total!
Blizzard just announced 8 balance changes that will go live tomorrow. Let's take a look at what's going to get changed.
One change that you should know about:
- Fixed a bug where completing all Book of Heroes installments would not display the proper achievement or give the proper award. All players who have already completed all 10 Book of Heroes will automatically receive the proper award of a Golden Standard pack.
All constructed balance changes' visuals
[Click on the image for a better resolution]
Quote from BlizzardThe 21.0.3 patch, releasing tomorrow, includes changes to eight cards in Standard, updates to five Battlegrounds heroes, and several bug fixes.
Standard Updates
Incanter’s FlowIl’gynoth
- Old: [Costs 2] → New: [Costs 3]
Darkglare
- Old: [Costs 4] 2 Attack, 6 Health → New: [Costs 6] 4 Attack, 8 Health
Battleground Battlemaster
- Old: [Costs 2] 2 Attack, 3 Health → New: [Costs 3] 3 Attack, 4 Health
Kolkar Pack Runner
- Old: [Costs 5] → New: [Costs 6]
Granite Forgeborn
- Old: [Costs 2] 2 Attack, 3 Health → New: [Costs 3] 3 Attack, 4 Health
Conviction (Rank 1), Conviction (Rank 2), Conviction (Rank 3)
- Old: 4 Attack, 5 Health → New: 4 Attack, 4 Health
Flesh Giant
- Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]
- Old: [Costs 8] → New: [Costs 9]
The cards listed above will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the 21.0.3 patch goes live.
Dev Comments: After two weeks of monitoring the rapidly evolving United in Stormwind launch metagame, we’re making a few balance changes to slow down the speed of the game by a turn or two. Overall, this translates to two things: limiting the efficiency at which combo decks can assemble the pieces they need to win, and reducing the burst damage that board-based decks have access to from hand. We hope that these changes will give a bit more room for slower strategies to find success in this meta, and we’ll continue to keep an eye on the live game to see if any further changes are needed.
Battlegrounds Updates
RETURNING HERO
Shudderwock
- Old: Burbling [Costs 1] Your next Battlecry this turn triggers twice. → New: Snicker-snack [Costs 0] Add a 1/1 Shudderling to your hand that repeats all Battlecries you’ve played. (Twice per game).
HERO UPDATES
Dancin’ Daryl
Fungalmancer Flurgl
- Hat Trick
- Old: [Passive] After you sell a minion, randomly give a minion in Bob’s Tavern +1/+1 twice. → New: [Passive] After you sell a minion, randomly give a minion in Bob’s Tavern +1/+1 three times.
Maiev Shadowsong
- Gone Fishing
- Old: [Passive] After you sell a Murloc, add a random Murloc to Bob’s Tavern. → New: [Passive] After you sell a minion, add a random Murloc to Bob’s Tavern.
Malygos
- Imprison
- Old: [Costs 1] Make a minion in Bob’s Tavern Dormant. After 3 turns, get it with +1/+1. → New: [Costs 1] Make a minion in Bob’s Tavern Dormant. After 3 turns, get it with +2/+2.
- Arcane Alteration
- Old: [Costs 0] Replace a minion with a random one of the same Tavern Tier. → New: [Costs 0] Replace a minion with a random one of the same Tavern Tier. (Twice per turn).
Arena Balance Update
We’ve updated the appearance rate of cards to ensure class balance remains close to the ideal 50% win-rate. Specifically, the win-rate of Druid, Warrior, and Demon Hunter should now be decreased. The win-rate of Mage, Priest, Rogue, and Shaman should now be increased. The win-rate of the other classes should be roughly the same as before.
Bug Fixes & Game Improvements
- Updated the Stealer of Souls animation to now only trigger if the card ends up in your hand (it does not trigger for cards that are Cast When Drawn, such as Soul Shards). The animation will also no longer trigger if the drawn card already costs Health instead of Mana (such as when you have two Stealer of Souls in play).
- Fixed card text errors for Psyfiend and Florist (no functional change to either).
- Fixed a bug where Prismatic Jewel Kit would trigger when effects returned a Divine Shield minion to the owner’s hand or moved a Divine Shield minion from the owner’s hand to the owner’s deck.
- Fixed a bug where Seek Guidance (the Priest questline) would sometimes count the original Cost of cards, instead of the Cost actually paid for the card.
- Fixed a bug where the Initiate Set version of Eye Beam did not properly display card art in the Collection Manager.
- Fixed a bug where Reborn Rites, The Lich King’s Battlegrounds hero power, caused players to disconnect from the game server.
- Added interactions between Pave the Way (part of the Paladin Questline) and Duels-specific hero powers.
- Fixed various bugs in Book of Heroes Gul’dan and Book of Heroes Illidan.
- Fixed a bug where Duels achievements were not tracking properly.
- Fixed a bug where Witchwood collection achievements triggered even though the requirements were not yet met.
- Fixed a bug where completing all Book of Heroes installments would not display the proper achievement or give the proper award. All players who have already completed all 10 Book of Heroes will automatically receive the proper award of a Golden Standard pack.
40k dust and no will to play
Honestly this. I took a few days break, hoping the meta would change. It just got worse. Those decks just got more fine tuned, and now they're not playing Solitaire anymore. They're playing Free Cell
Does anybody know if the second Shudderling, from Shudderwock BG hero, repeats the first Shudderling BC?
Ugh... I was so hoping for quest nerfs, or cards directly tied to why the quests are broken. They hit OTK DH by 1-2 turns by nerfing one of the combo pieces, but the warlock nerfs has done nothing to slow them down. If anything, they're harder to remove because they got a health buff.
The rest of the nerfs absolutely make no sense, except maybe the giant, which isn't even in every Warlock quest deck. I'll just cheese quests, avoid standard, and forego buying the next expansion until these quests are rotated to wild/hall of fame, or have some hefty nerfs.
The state of the game is absolutely boring. I'm playing against a player, that is playing against themselves, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, except tech in cards that specifically target those decks, which are also worthless against any other deck, and greatly waters down the power of your deck, except against quest.
I was glad to find Paladin AT LEAST had a chance against quest, by dishing out more damage than they can handle. At least in this scenario, the opponent isn't playing solitaire anymore, as you're FORCING them to play minions in some capacity. Unless, you know, Mage just RNG whips out 5+ ice barriers, or if they're running Font of Power
nice I had 9 battleground battlemasters .... plus 360 dust for me
+I can't stand the meta right now.
Warlock, Shaman, Mage, Paladin are the classes I only play against, sometimes Hunter. WL, Shaman, Mage quests should be deleted...
Quest rewards are also really cheap... everyone wins before turn 10. Just ridiculous.
+ the "nerfs" did not help at all, as I expected.
Yeah... these nerfs are not actually nerfs. Delaying the combo by 1 turn, and sometimes, doesn't affect it at all. Paladin was the only class that I found that could stand up to OTK by dishing out more damage than their solitaire game.
...I hate this expansion so much :(
Well, at least I dusted 7 golden epics, 1 golden legendary... swimming in 11k dust.
For each of the past 3 expansions, I have said "This is the worst expansion and meta I have ever seen." Idkwtf is going on in their development studio, but, for me, they are absolutely on the wrong track.
I can't even finish a game this expansion, without just rage quitting and closing the client.
Edit: In fact, for the first time since weekly quests were added, I did not complete them last week; and the same will be true this week. Am I finally on my way out of this bad relationship? I hope so.
Haha same, I guess I'm finally able to move on happily without looking back at this game :D
It's been crystal clear since Iksar has been in charge that quality of design and balance has plummeted. They pretend like things are better by having more frequent balancing updates, but the fact that they have so many so often is NOT a good sign - things have been released in such unplayable states that to not fix them within weeks would have resulted in a dead game. Things were never this bad years ago that required such action, because they were clearly testing before and are clearly not testing now.
Simply put - the people who knew what they were doing are long gone from Activision.
Iksar is a huge d0uche, too... I'm sure that is no coincidence.
What is ultimately frustrating is I thought Ashes of Outland was alright, and I absolutely loved Scholomance. I thought that was the best expansion in years... Then they just walloped us with the 3 worst expansions they've ever created, back to back to back. They aren't the worst because the cards are bad (like TGT), they are the worst because all 3 expansions heavily promoted anti-interactive gameplay... and minion interaction was the foundation this entire game was built on.
I'm kind of out of the loop, lately, since I have absolutely hated this expansion... but none of these cards are cards that have infuriated me lol.
Just played 12 games:
5x Quest Mage 4x Quest WL 3x Facehunter.
The WL drew 12-16 cards at 6/7 Mana in 1 turn, nothing changed, at one point they get the darkglare, stealer of souls into infinite draw combo and the game just ends, no matter if its turn 6,7 or 8 after the nerf. I played HS for 5 years, there has always been at least one OTK combo in standard and it always took at least until turn 10 with perfect draw, mostly turn 11-15 (Priest Hemet Mecha'thun, WL Cataclysm Mecha, Maly druid or my favorite topsy turvey apm priest where u had to collect 7 cards in hand.
The OTK was actually not braindead easy to pull off and Aggro beat OTK beat Control beat Aggro.
Every deck that has an OTK win condition has to be limited in its board presence, the WL is just everything in one deck, removal like a control, huge board presence and OTK before turn 10. Just stupid. The only way around is hyper aggro with as much facedamage from hand as possible or a faster OTK.
They f*** up the experience, no valid control deck for a warrior and priest in a warcraft universe.
I totally agree.
thanks bro. you a life saver
So where are the real balance changes? Heck, some of these cards weren't even being played, and they didn't touch the warlock, mage, or hunter new quests. Conviction was in need of a nerf, but it should've been something like +2 attack instead.
thanks, im now sitting at 27k dust.
I completed all book of heros where is my pack? Don't see it still
When I launched the game it did only show me 7 cards changed, didn't show Granite Forgeborn for some reason.
The card change is still applied tho..