21.3 Patch Notes - Constructed & Battlegrounds Balance Changes, Warlock Quest Banned In Wild & More!
Blizzard just released patch notes for the upcoming patch that will be released tomorrow. Check out what's new.
Quote from BlizzardThe 21.3 patch, releasing tomorrow, includes several updates across Standard, Wild, Battlegrounds, Duels, and Arena.
Standard and Wild Updates
The following cards have been adjusted down in power level.
Irebound Brute
- Old: [Costs 7] →New: [Costs 8]
Dev Comment: Irebound Brute was playable a bit earlier than intended on average. Pushing it back a turn should soften extreme turns.
Mindrender Illucia
- Old: Battlecry: Swap hands and decks with your opponent until your next turn. →New: Battlecry: Replace your hand with a copy of your opponent’s until end of turn.
Dev Comment: With the refinement of Shadow Priest in recent weeks, Mindrender Illucia has been overperforming in the archetype, in an unintended way. Instead of being used as a late game disruption tool, Shadow Priests have been using Illucia as an early game play to essentially skip the opponent’s turn. This change is aimed at removing that problematic gameplay from Illucia, while still keeping her in a similar space with her effect.
Perpetual Flame
- Old: [Costs 1] →New: [Costs 2]
Dev Comment: Perpetual Flame is a very efficient removal tool for Questline Shaman. Going up one mana here will give board-based decks a better shot against Shaman in the early- and mid-game.
Command the Elements
- Tame the Flames (the third portion of the Questline)
- Old: Play 2 cards with Overload. Reward: Stormcaller Bru’kan. →New: Play 3 cards with Overload. Reward: Stormcaller Bru’kan.
Dev Comment: Slowing down the speed at which Questline Shamans can get their final reward should open up more room for counterplay, particularly from slower strategies.
The Demon Seed
- The Demon Seed (part 1 of the Questline)
- Old: Take 6 damage on your turns. Reward: Lifesteal. Deal 3 damage to the enemy hero. →New: Take 8 damage on your turns. Reward: Lifesteal. Deal 3 damage to the enemy hero.
- Establish the Link (part 2 of the Questline)
- Old: Take 7 damage on your turns. Reward: Lifesteal. Deal 3 damage to the enemy hero. →New: Take 8 damage on your turns. Reward: Lifesteal. Deal 3 damage to the enemy hero.
- Additionally, The Demon Seed is now banned in Wild.
Dev Comment: After monitoring both Standard and Wild since the release of Stormwind, we’ve decided to both increase the damage required on the first two steps for Standard and ban the Questline in Wild. In Standard, we are slightly upping the amount of damage needed to complete the Questline to slow down the speed at which Tamsin locks up games. In Wild, where there are many more efficient self-damaging cards, The Demon Seed can be completed at an unintentionally fast rate. We are banning the card to protect the format from the problematic gameplay it created. When The Demon Seed rotates to Wild, we will unban it and reposition the card to be more appropriate for the format.
Runed Mithril Rod
- Old: [Costs 3] →New: [Costs 4]
Dev Comment: Runed Mithril Rod is overperforming relative to mana-generation sources in other classes, mainly due to Warlock’s card draw potential. Going up one mana will bring Runed Mithril Rod’s power level more in line with what other classes have access to.
The cards listed above will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the 21.3 patch goes live.
The following cards have been adjusted up in power level.
Dev Comments: We’re looking at opening up a few more strategies for some of the less-diverse classes and underrepresented archetypes in the Standard metagame. These buffs are aimed at some of the weaker archetypes to make them more appealing options to play with. Some of these changes are on the lighter side, in anticipation of the mini-set coming in the next major patch after the patch launching Mercenaries.
Leatherworking KitSelective Breeder
- Old: [Costs 2] →New: [Costs 1]
Wildfire
- Old: 1 Attack, 1 Health →New: 1 Attack, 3 Health
Mordresh Fire Eye
- Old: [Costs 2] →New: [Costs 1]
Stormwind Freebooter
- Old: [Costs 10] 10 Attack, 10 Health →New: [Costs 8] 8 Attack, 8 Health
Stonemaul Anchorman
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health →New: 3 Attack, 4 Health
Bloodsail Deckhand
- Old: 4 Attack, 5 Health →New: 4 Attack, 6 Health
- Old: 2 Attack, 1 Health →New: 2 Attack, 2 Health
Battlegrounds Updates
GENERAL UPDATE
- Turn lengths have been reverted to their pre-21.2 times (turns 3-9 have been reduced by 5 seconds after they were temporarily increased by 5 seconds in Patch 21.2).
HERO UPDATES
ShudderwockGalewing
- Snicker-snack
- Old: [Costs 0] → New: [Costs 2]
Master Nguyen
- Dungar’s Gryphon (Eastern Plaguelands Option)
- Old: In 5 turns, upgrade your Tavern Tier. →New: In 5 turns, your next Tavern Tier upgrade costs (5) less.
- Power of the Storm [Passive]
- Adjusted the odds of hero power offerings (no text changes).
MINION UPDATES
Impatient Doomsayer
- Defiant Shipwright has been removed from the minion pool.
- Southsea Captain has been returned to the minion pool.
Kathra’natir
- Old: [Tavern Tier 3] Avenge (3): Add a random Demon to your hand. →New: [Tavern Tier 4] Avenge (4): Add a random Demon to your hand.
Leapfrogger
- Old: [Tavern Tier 4] 7 Attack, 5 Health. Your other Demons have +3 Attack. Your Hero is Immune. →New: [Tavern Tier 3] 5 Attack, 4 Health. Your other Demons have +2 Attack. Your Hero is Immune.
Monstrous Macaw
- Old: Deathrattle: Give a friendly Beast +2/+2 and this Deathrattle. →New: Give a friendly Beast +1/+1 and this Deathrattle.
Reanimating Rattler
- Old: After this attacks, trigger a random friendly minion’s Deathrattle. →New: After this attacks, trigger another friendly minion’s Deathrattle.
Whelp Smuggler
- Old: [Tavern Tier 4] 6 Attack, 2 Health. →New: [Tavern Tier 5] 7 Attack, 3 Health.
Impulsive Trickster
- Old: 2 Attack, 4 Health. After a friendly Dragon gains Attack, give it +2 Health. →New: 2 Attack, 5 Health. After a friendly Dragon gains Attack, give it +1 Health.
Master of Realities
- Old: Deathrattle: Give this minion’s maximum Health to a friendly minion. →New: Deathrattle: Give this minion’s maximum Health to another friendly minion.
Peggy Brittlebone
- Old: [Tavern Tier 6]. →New: [Tavern Tier 5].
- Old: 5 Attack, 3 Health. After a card is added to your hand, give another random Pirate +1/+1 →New: 6 Attack, 5 Health. After a card is added to your hand, give another friendly Pirate +1/+1.
Dev Comment: The text change portion of this change is just to clarify the card’s current, intended functionality. It does not represent any functional change.
GoldgrubberSalty Looter
- Old: 2 Attack, 2 Health. →New: 4 Attack, 4 Health.
Prophet of the Boar
- Old: 4 Attack, 4 Health. →New: 4 Attack, 5 Health.
Roadboar
- Old: 2 Attack, 3 Health. →New: 3 Attack, 3 Health.
Bristleback Brute
- Old: 1 Attack, 4 Health. →New: 2 Attack, 4 Health.
Dynamic Duo
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health. →New: 4 Attack, 4 Health.
Charlga
- Old: 3 Attack, 4 Health. →New: 4 Attack, 5 Health.
- Old: At the end of your turn, play a Blood Gem on all other friendly minions. →New: At the end of your turn, play a Blood Gem on all friendly minions.
Duels Updates
- Party Replacements, Rally the Troops, and Oops, All Spells! have all been moved from Passive Treasure Pool 2 to Pool 2 Ultra Rare.
- All Together Now has been moved from Passive Treasure Pool 1 to Pool 2.
- Voidtouched Attendant is now banned from deck creation.
Arena Updates
Ramming Mount will no longer be draftable in Arena. Additionally, we discovered a bug with some card offering rates. We’ve addressed that bug and will be re-adjusting the offering rates to match the intended rates, which should help move all classes closer to the 50% class winrate.
Bug Fixes & Game Improvements
- Fixed a bug causing crashes when the friends list was opened.
- Fixed a bug where friends could sometimes not be challenged.
- Fixed a bug where Maestra of the Masquerade would sometimes have you start the game as a Rogue (not her best disguise).
- Fixed a bug that prevented Grand Magus Antonidas from hitting Stealth targets and resulted in Antonidas potentially hitting the caster’s own face if the enemy hero was in Stealth.
- Fixed a bug where Tradeable cards would keep enchantments if shuffled into your deck by something other than Tradeable.
- Fixed bugs where cards like Razormane Battleguard would not properly reduce the cost of cards after Celestial Alignment was played.
- Fixed a bug where Barrens Scavenger’s cost could be reduced below 1 while you had 10 or fewer cards in your deck.
- Fixed a bug where Highlord Fordragon would trigger on minions that were not in play.
- Fixed bugs where cards like Master of Realities and Whelp Smuggler would have an incorrect number of triggers.
- Fixed a bug where swapping a Tavern Tier 6 minion (such as with Arcane Alteration, Malygos’s Hero Power) would sometimes cause it to disappear.
- Fixed a visual bug that caused enemy Tavern Tiers to show as reset to Tavern Tier 1.
It shows how toxic the even/odd paradigms were, even years later, when cards being improved becomes a point of contention because they're no longer even or odd. Genn and Baku were a disaster.
Priest class is 7th on hsreplay site right now. Do you think It will be 10th after Blizzard killed Illucia? And Aggro Shadow Priest is about 57%-60% winrate... It could fall to 50%-55% after Illucia died?! But why blizzard changed Illucia when priest is 7th class on hrseplay....
I still cant believe in this Bloodsail Deckhand buff. I mean what the actually hell? A freaking one mana minion overstatted with an amazing battlecry...thats ridiculous. Why they are going so hard for this kind of thing? This xpac already feels so much broken with stats balance, this is probably one of the reasons that rogue feels so awkward because most rogue combat tricks get useless so fast.
I think they want to push quest warrior in standard, but they forgot or don't care about wild. This is not right way to do it.
That's because wild doesn't matter. It's wild so get over it.
Keyword: During your opponents turn. How often does that happen since ActiBlizz has virtually killed any attempts at making Mill a viable archetype since they don’t like it
Mill Rogue is still a thing.
Well... Time to put 2xGolakka Crawler in every wild deck and I am not sure it will even do anything.
So they essentially just killed Warlock in standard. Runed Mithril Rod for 4 mana is simply unplayable. Nerfed The Demon Seed is not only too slow by itself (probably comparable to Seek Guidance) but it will also slow down Flesh Giant by another 2 turns, so Warlock will die to both aggro and midrange, before he has any chance to play his counter pressure (not to mention he has to deal more self-damage now).
thats great right?
Why killing the class is great?
The class shouldn't just die because of one nerfed archetype. In that case, the class needs more diversity to play... any class shouldn't rely on just one archetype or the Questline to be competitive... We'd welcome to see Zoolock, Controllock, Handlock, or any other midrange Warlock decks to be back in the competitive scene
Good... honestly. It was a badly designed quest to begin with.
That's not gonna happen. Warlock is 100% board-based class, with no burst damage, offensive weapons or buffs, therefore he has to rely entirely on minion damage to do any face damage. Unfortunately, that's pretty bad nowadays and such deck cannot compete against other decks in the meta. Quest was Warlock's edge, but now it's gone. Without it, Warlock will continue to be dumpster-tier class, like he was for last 2-3 years (since Cube Lock rotated out).
There were PLENTY of control decks in Barrens and there was one that was dominate. This whole change is about money and nothing else. Don't delude yourself and think they did this by "accident". Mobile players makeup the biggest revenue stream for Hearthstone and those players only play at most 20-30 minutes at a time. Long games turn them off and make them buy less and they saw that in Barrens.
Plenty? Name couple please.
Pirate Warrior & Odd Hunter will compete to dominate the Wild mode.... until we can complain enough about them for 1-2 months or until next expansion Blizz will nerf/ban them like to Warlock...
I'm still (maybe foolishly) holding out hope that the mini-set introduces a card or two that punishes having very few minions in your deck.
Something like "If your opponent's deck has fewer than 5 minions, then (insert powerful effect here)" or some ridiculously statted card, like a 5 mana 15/15 "Has -1/-1 for every minion in your opponent's deck". This would tamp down on Odd hunters, APM Mages, etc.
As far as Pirate Warrior.. we'll have to see.. maybe with The Demon Seed gone, some other counterplay has room to breathe. I do think what they're doing to Bloodsail Deckhand is the most egregious power creep I've ever seen to a 1 mana card.
All they need to do is print quest hate. Honestly, why is there no quest hate in the game?
There's weapon hate. Secret Hate. Seven flavors of combo hate in spell hate, battlecry hate, deathrattle hate, pull or destroy minion in your hand hate, pull minion from their deck hate, shuffle their hand back hate, 1 mana spell hate, put things in their deck to disrupt their singleton hate, specific minion type hate, hell they even added ARMOR HATE.
So why is there no card that simply says "Battlecry: Fail your opponent's quest." Why are quests untouchable by the opponent?
To be honest they could have changed Mindrender Illucia mana cost back to the original 2 with that rework.