Patchnotes 23.2.2 - Drek'thar Nerf & more Buffs and Nerfs - Battlegrounds too
Blizzard published the Patchnotes for the upcoming Balance Patch, lots of changes, both buffs and nerfs!
See all visuals for the constructed changes at the bottom of this article.
This Patch is LIVE!
Quote from BlizzardPatch 23.2.2, launching May 19, includes bug fixes and balance changes to Battlegrounds and Standard!
Card Updates
The following cards have had their power adjusted down:
Drek’Thar
- Old: Battlecry: If this costs more than every minion in your deck, summon 2 of them. → New: Battlecry: If this costs more than every minion in your deck, summon one of those minions.
Multi-Strike
- Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]
Dragonbane Shot
- Old: [Costs 2] → New: [Costs 3]
The above craftable cards will be eligible for full dust refunds for two weeks following Patch 23.2.2 (the only version of Drek’Thar that is craftable is the normal, non-golden version). Any players who own Diamond Drek’Thar at the time that the patch goes live will automatically receive 3,000 Gold when they log in as a refund.
The following cards have been buffed:
Xhilag’s Stalk (part of Xhilag the Abyss)
- Old: At the end of your turn, deal 1 damage to an enemy. → New: At the end of your turn, deal 2 damage to an enemy.
Harpoon Gun
- Old: After your hero attacks, Dredge. If it’s a Beast, reduce its Cost by (2). → New: After your hero attacks, Dredge. If it’s a Beast, reduce its Cost by (3).
Pet Collector
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health → New: 4 Attack, 4 Health
Azsharan Saber
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health → New: 4 Attack, 3 Health
Sunken Saber (generated by Azsharan Saber)
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health → New: 4 Attack, 3 Health
Blackwater Behemoth
- Old: [Costs 8] → New: [Costs 7]
Whirlpool
- Old: [Costs 9] → New: [Costs 8]
Shadowcloth Needle
- Old: [Costs 2] → New: [Costs 1]
Serpent Wig
- Old: Give a minion +1/+1. If you played a Naga while holding this, add a Serpent Wig into your hand. → New: Give a minion +1/+2. If you played a Naga while holding this, add a Serpent Wig into your hand.
Tooth of Nefarian
- Old: [Costs 3] → New: [Costs 2]
SI:7 Smuggler
- Old: Battlecry: Summon a random 0-Cost minion. (Improved for each other SI:7 card you have played this game). → New: Battlecry: Summon a random 1-Cost minion. (Improved for each other SI:7 card you have played this game).
Wildpaw Gnoll
- Old: [Costs 6] 3 Attack, 5 Health → New: [Costs 5] 4 Attack, 5 Health
Tess Greymane
- Old: [Costs 8] → New: [Costs 7]
Hench-Clan Burglar
- Old: 4 Attack, 3 Health → New: 4 Attack, 4 Health
Sira’kess Cultist
- Old: 2 Attack, 3 Health → New: 3 Attack, 4 Health
Dragged Below
- Old: [Costs 4] → New: [Costs 3]
Azsharan Scavenger
- Old: [Costs 3] 3 Attack, 4 Health → New: [Costs 2] 2 Attack, 3 Health
Sunken Scavenger (generated by Azsharan Scavenger)
- Old: [Costs 3] 3 Attack, 4 Health → New: [Costs 2] 2 Attack, 3 Health
Bloodscent Vilefin
- Old: [Costs 4] 4 Attack, 4 Health → New: [Costs 3] 3 Attack, 4 Health
Battlegrounds Updates
Hero change:
Fungalmancer Flurgl (Gone Fishing hero power)
- Old: Passive: After you sell a minion, add a random Murloc to Bob’s Tavern. → New: Passive: After you sell 2 minions, add a random Murloc to Bob’s Tavern.
Hero Armor changes:
- Al’Akir, Galakrond, George the Fallen, and Malygos have been moved to Armor Tier 1.
- Death Speaker Blackthorn, Fungalmancer Flurgl, Ini Stormcoil, Lord Barov, Maiev Shadowsong, Queen Azshara, Rokara, and Tickatus have been moved to Armor Tier 2.
- Endwin VanCleef has been moved to Armor Tier 4.
- Deathwing, Elise Starseeker, and Kurtrus Ashfallen have been moved to Armor Tier 5.
- Aranna Starseeker and Skycap’n Kragg have been moved to Armor Tier 6.
- Onyxia and Queen Wagtoggle have been moved to Armor Tier 7.
Minion changes:
Snail Cavalry
- Old: 5 Attack, 2 Health → New: 4 Attack, 2 Health
Lava Lurker
- Old: 2 Attack, 5 Health → New: 2 Attack, 4 Health
Shoal Commander
- Old: 2 Attack, 2 Health → New: 1 Attack, 2 Health
Stormscale Siren
- Old: [Tavern Tier 3] 5 Attack, 4 Health. At the end of your turn, your Spellcraft minions cast their spells on themselves. → New: [Tavern Tier 5] 6 Attack, 5 Health. At the end of your turn, you cast your Spellcraft minions’ spells on them.
- Dev Comment: The effect text update is not a functional change, but just a rephrasing to make the card text better match how the effect currently functions.
Critter Wrangler
- Old: 5 Attack, 7 Health. After you cast a Spellcraft spell on a minion, give it +2/+2. → New: 5 Attack, 6 Health. After you cast a Spellcraft spell on a minion, give it +2/+1.
Tidemistress Athissa
- Old: 7 Attack, 8 Health. After you cast a spell, give four friendly Naga +1/+1. → New: 7 Attack, 3 Health. After you cast a spell, give three friendly Naga +1/+1.
Orgozoa, the Tender
- Old: 5 Attack, 9 Health → New: 3 Attack, 7 Health
Darkgaze Elder
- Old: After you spend 4 Gold, play a Blood Gem on four friendly Quilboar. → New: After you spend 5 Gold, play a Blood Gem on four friendly Quilboar.
Young Murk-Eye
- Old (normal): At the end of your turn, adjacent Murlocs trigger their Battlecries. → New: At the end of your turn, the Murloc to the left of this triggers its Battlecry.
- Old (golden): At the end of your turn, adjacent Murlocs trigger their Battlecries twice. → New: At the end of your turn, adjacent Murlocs trigger their Battlecries.
Duels Updates
- Removed the Dragon Affinity Passive Treasure.
- Dev Comment: Good night, sweet prince. Till we meet again.
- Tuned the synergy rules for Emerald Goggles and Fire spell school Passive Treasures.
Bug Fixes and Game Improvements
- Improved connectivity surrounding Discover effects.
- Fixed a bug where a temporary Divine Shield from Glowscale could remove a minion’s permanent Divine Shield.
- Fixed a bug where applying a Spellcraft to a magnetic minion in Bob’s tavern then makes that buff permanent.
- Fixed a bug causing Mercenaries Portraits (mostly Rexxar Portraits) to disappear. Players who earned an additional copy of a Portrait while it was temporarily missing will receive a random Portrait from that Merc, instead (or Coins for that Merc if all Portraits are already owned).
- Updated the text in the Upgrade to Golden feature U.I. to better match functionality.
- Fixed an error that caused people who selected the “random” card back to have that function unchecked when they first logged in after Patch 23.2.
Disappointed with the buffs to priest. It's not enough again.. lyra should be improved to 3 or 4 mana to see play. She's not in many, if any, lists at all. Also, behemoth should have taunt and divine shield, it's only viable in quest priest currently. Oh well, hopefully priest still has some more buffs in the near future.
Wierd for so many buffs to hunter, wow. No nerfs to warrior. No nerfs to mage. Strong archetypes in both will be hard to deal with. Also a little concerned with the early game buffs to rogue. Rogue isn't as dreadful as is being made out, some archetypes are horrible to play against.
Nice sensible commentary! Totally agree.
First 3 games of BG, top 4 all Nagas, except me who played elementals in the second game. First impressions are that they are still broken as F
Random guy gives you a five dollar bill for doing nothing.
"I don't like it! I want one dollar bills instead"
See the point you're trying to make?
The buff to SI:7 smuggler is absolutely trivial. It changes nothing for the archetype.
If they wanted to buff the archetype they could at least buff the questline steps to be "Discover a Spy Gizmo" instead of at random.
Are they just randomly picking cards and randomly picking changes? Honestly, none of these make sense. The nerf for Hunter should be the quest. The nerf for Warlock should be the Phylactery. Warriors' quest is just so damn strong with so many good synergies. Pick a spot. Priests Hero Card shouldn't trigger silenced minions which deathrattle didn't trigger. Also somehow slow down Mech Mage and Paladin just a bit. It scales quite fast.
Just my opinion. The buffs were okay. Minus the Warlock spell.
Are you a troll or do you genuinely think the cards you mentioned need changes?
Of all of the cards to ask a nerf to, Phylactery shouldn't be one of them. Warrior quest already received a nerf and it had a noticeable impact on the deck performance. A good Questline Hunter will outvalue and outburst any deck with a single copy of Dragonbane Shot. The questline isn't the problem, it is definitely Dragonbane Shot. I hate to bring winrate as an argument but Priest is really really underperforming with a ~35% winrate. If you are losing against a Priest then either your deck is worse or the Priest got lucky.
It seems to me you get hung up on matches you had a bad time with.
Wow, finally good patch from them. Keep it up!
As a Rogue main I'm very happy with Tooth of Nefarian's buff. I might run two even outside of Tess decks: nice removal with an upside and can go face too
DH is just crippled, but is still very strong. The Dragonbane shot instead killed the card, but doesn't matter, hateful deck
Why would you get a refund for cards that were made better?
The answer is no.
Well, change is a change. Some people May not even like the so called buffs. For example, if u love opel cars, and soneone changes it to Ferrari overnight u dont like, deapite it being better, u want the opel back or refund.
There is literally no human on earth that had their Opel turn to a Ferrari overnight and wanted the change reversed.
Blizzard always refunds only cards that get nerfed, to compensate you for a card you might have spent resources on that suddenly became less useful. They don't refund cards that get changed just for the sake of it.
Do we get refund for buffed (aka changed) cards also? Some of us might keep bad cards to wait for buff refunds..
Looks like Miracle Rogue is back
Priest buffs won't be good enough. This class needs a real game designer for a change.
When are the nerfs/buffs live guys?
Warlock won't be meta. If Warlock was T1, Warrior and Druid would rise and spam Mutanus to counter it. Even play the 5 mana murloc to add Mutanus every game. Spam with Zola and Brann, the rest of your deck can be pure anti-aggro and voila
both these deck hard lose to OTK priest, and aggro decks do well against all of them which is why they're almost always the meta. MECH PALADIN will be so cancer
I think the best deck contender now are Control Warrior, Mech Paladin and maybe Naga Mage
That makes no sense. Mutanus is somewhat good against Curse Warlock - not especially good at that, but at least somewhat good - and completely useless against Murloc Warlock. Druid as a whole is bad against it, like it is against most sufficiently strong agro decks.
Control Warrior is definitely a good option against Murloc Warlock, but everything else you said couldn't be further from the truth.
Kazakuzan Druid/Warrior against curse/OTK Warlock
You can win by :
* produce boards, attack them (very unlikely)
* big Kazakuzan spells to hit their face
* MUTANUS to hit their legendary minions/curse enablers
Makes sense to me.