25.0.4 Patch Notes - Many Balance Changes - Arena and BG Changes Too & More
These are the patchnotes for a HUGE balance patch touching Constructed, Arena and Battlegrounds. Read about them below!
Patch is LIVE!
Quote from BlizzardPatch 25.0.4 is a data-only patch, launching today, that includes balance changes to Standard, Wild, Battlegrounds, and Arena, as well as bug fixes and more!
Hearthstone Changes
Dev Comment: Balance changes at this point in an expansion are made with early, somewhat limited data. For these changes, we like to address the most egregious power outliers and play patterns that we know we don’t like—cards that we’re likely to adjust down the line anyway as the meta evolves over time. We hope and expect to make some spicier changes in our next balance pass, once we have more data.
The following cards are being adjusted to be less powerful:
Unleash Fel
- Old: Manathirst (4)
- New: Manathirst (6)
Relic of Dimensions
- Old: [Costs 5]
- New: [Costs 6]
Dev Comment: The Manathirst on Unleash Fel felt like a non-factor that was almost always on anyway when you wanted to play the card. This change makes the card more interesting and helps reel in a Demon Hunter power outlier. Relics are prevalent and powerful—we like them and didn’t want to fully revert their power level, so we’re just touching the strongest Relic to make it a little less explosive.
Anub’Rekhan
- Old: Battlecry: Gain 8 Armor. This turn, your minions cost Armor instead of Mana.
- New: Battlecry: Gain 8 Armor. This turn, your next 3 minions cost Armor instead of Mana.
Dev Comment: This Brann-Anub’Rekhan combo is not a big winrate outlier, but it represents a play pattern we don’t like. We wanted to reduce lethality and remove the ability for the combo to let players dump their entire hand, while still allowing ramp strategies.
Boon of the Ascended
- Old: [Costs 4]
- New [Costs 5]
Priestess Valishj
- Old: [Costs 0]
- New: [Costs 1]
Dev Comment: Boon Priest is not common or overly powerful at most levels of play, but it is the best performing deck at high legend and it wins through frustrating play patterns. We wanted to give it a couple small adjustments to make it more in line with the rest of the meta, especially after the other adjustments in this patch.
Necrolord Draka
- Old: [Costs 4]
- New: [Costs 5]
Sinstone Graveyard
- Old: [Costs 2]
- New: [Costs 3]
Sketchy Information
- Old: [Costs 3]
- New: [Costs 4]
Forsaken Lieutenant
- Old: [Costs 2]
- New: [Costs 3]
Dev Comment: There are two Rogue decks that we want to adjust this patch. Deathrattle Rogue is a deck that can do some cool, fun things, but it’s too fast for most decks to deal with. We don’t want to destroy these synergies, but we do want to slow them down. Similarly, Miracle Rogue makes for very bad play experiences when their pop-off turns are too powerful too soon. We think it is fun and thematic for Rogue to have those turns where they play a bunch of cards and get rewarded for it, but we want to slow that turn down a little.
Prince Renathal
- Old: Your deck size and starting Health are 40.
- New: Your deck size is 40. Your starting Health is 35.
Dev Comment: Renathal had its run. He’s the most played card in the game and the meta has warped around him for a long time, so we are making this change to open the meta back up. At the same time, we know he’s one of the most popular cards we’ve ever made, so we wanted to preserve his core effect as an option for his fans.
Tome Tampering
- Now banned in Wild.
Dev Comment: Discard is a thematic Warlock archetype with many tools over the years. Those tools have combined into a disruptive force in the Wild meta. Tome Tampering is the powerful enabler that puts this deck over the format’s power level; banning that enabler will let players continue to use those thematic discard Warlock tools, but at a level that is more in line with the rest of the format.
The above craftable cards will be eligible for a full dust refund for two weeks following Patch 25.0.4 (Signature versions of Anub’Rekhan and all versions of Prince Renathal are not craftable).
We're taking a hard look at what systemic changes we want to make to Signature cards in the future, and have not finalized those decisions. This time, players who have the Signature version of Anub'Rekhan as of December 20th at 10am PST will receive a grant of 1600 Arcane Dust at login, later that week. Things may work differently in the future. We will share more information on those future plans once they're finalized.
The following cards are being adjusted to be more powerful:
Dev Comment: Death Knight is the cool new class that many players want to try out, so we’re making some adjustments to open them up a little and give them more toys to tinker with. Like with the nerfs, these buffs are designed to be higher confidence; we specifically looked for low playrate Death Knight cards that seemed primed for upgrades. We plan to take another look in the next balance pass.
Corpse Bride
- Old: Battlecry: Spend up to 8 Corpses. Summon a Risen Groom with stats equal to the amount spent.
- New: Battlecry: Spend up to 10 Corpses. Summon a Risen Groom with stats equal to the amount spent.
Malignant Horror
- Old: At the end of your turn, spend 5 Corpses to summon a copy of this minion.
- New: At the end of your turn, spend 4 Corpses to summon a copy of this minion.
Meat Grinder
- Old: Battlecry: Shred a random minion in your deck to gain 3 Corpses.
- New: Battlecry: Shred a random minion in your deck to gain 4 Corpses.
Blightfang
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health
- New: 3 Attack, 4 Health
Stitched Giant
- Old: [Costs 10]
- New: [Costs 9]
Ymirjar Deathbringer
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health
- New: 4 Attack, 3 Health
Rime Sculptor
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health
- New: 4 Attack, 3 Health
Obliterate
- Old: Destroy a minion. Your hero takes damage equal to its Health.
- New: Destroy a minion. Your hero takes 3 damage.
Blood Tap
- Old: Give all minions in your hand +1/+1. Spend 3 Corpses to give them +1/+1 more.
- New: Give all minions in your hand +1/+1. Spend 2 Corpses to give them +1/+1 more.
Battlegrounds Updates
Quest Reward Updates
- The Kidnap Sack Quest Reward has been made harder to earn.
- The Hidden Treasure Vault and Teal Tiger Sapphire Quest Rewards have been made easier to earn.
- The Partner in Crime, Pilfered Lamps, Wondrous Wisdomball, and Yogg-tastic Tasties Quest Rewards will appear more frequently.
Dev Comment: As we approach the end of the season, we want all players to have a chance to experience some of the rarer Quests they may or may not have been able to find. Enjoy!
Minion Updates
Toxfin
- Old: Tavern Tier 4
- New: Tavern Tier 6
Dev Comment: Though not a power outlier at most levels, Toxfin has a limiting effect on what playstyles feel viable in Murloc lobbies. We are pushing Toxfin up to Tier 6 as a way to open up some space for more diverse strategies.
Minion Pool Updates
- Mechano-Tank and Interrogator Whitemane have been removed from the minion pool.
- Witchwing Nestmatron, Mechano-Egg, Mythrax the Unraveler, and Seafood Slinger have been returned to the minion pool.
Arena Updates
Arena draft appearance rates have been adjusted as follows:
- Death Knight and Paladin cards that generate more cards will appear less frequently.
- Death Knight cards that remove opposing minions and leave a board presence will appear less frequently.
- Low winrate cards from low performing classes will appear less frequently.
- High winrate cards from low performing classes will appear more frequently.
- Some Neutral cards will appear more or less frequently, depending on their performance in a given class.
Bug Fixes and Game Improvements
- [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Potion Belt could not Discover two of the same Concoction.
- [Hearthstone] The wording on Astalor, the Flamebringer has been updated for clarity; this is not a functional change.
- [Hearthstone] Grim Patron and Gruntled Patron will now once again leave Corpses. Adjusted the Corpse Explosion interaction so that it no longer chains infinitely.
- [Duels] Fixed a bug where Greatsword of the Ebon Blade would lose Durability whenever any card was played, not just minions.
- [Duels] Fixed a bug that made Scourge Strike unable to be played.
- [Duels] Fixed a bug where the Scourging Hero Power doesn’t work if your board is full.
- [Duels] Fixed a bug where Hematology and Unholy Embrace did not count as consuming Corpses.
- [Duels] Fixed a bug where Unholy Embrace always filled your hand if you had any Corpses to spend when you played it.
Pretty much no reason to run Asphyxiate over Obliterate now.
Also most of the buffs are for the corpse spender cards which is ok but I feel they still wont be run, with the exception of Corpse Bride and the giant
bro i cant play stitched giant in my even dk anymore :(
Imagine not removing or reworking brann...
Brann is the reason most combo decks are insane lol.
Clueless blizzard.
and the unholy buffs are too weak
Unfortunately we know why this is. There's something in their design process that once they lock in cards to the core set they cannot be touched till the next rotation. Taking Brann out according to them is impossible because the League of Explorers was a theme in the core set this year.
Laughably, the other three explorers are completely unplayed.
Reno is not even relevant to the game anymore because if you're control you play Renethal and singleton Renethal isn't viable. Even then, it's only good against aggro decks and not the combo-control that OTKs you from board or hand. If they have a massive board and you heal to full, they just continue winning more.
Finley is worthless because hero powers are weaker than they've ever been.
And Elise is worthless because late game generic value cards don't win against a combo control OTK.
Yeah they could have used the other versions of them and made it more interesting but it was dictated that only the original four for some reason.
Biggest nerfs here are sketchy, sinstone and lieutenant but man everything else is pretty unaffected. What shocks me is that neither illusionist or swiftscale got addressed which are the two cards that put DR rogue into overdrive.
Renathal didn't need a nerf, now it's just a drawback to have him in your deck, 35HP isn't worth it.
DK got so many meaningless buffs.. one health on blightfang? One attack on rime sculptor? One more corpse on meat grinder? I'm not seeing these push any relevance except Obliterate, and rime sculptor would have still seen play at 3/3 because it's pretty damn strong.
Some surprising changes here for sure.
I knew Fel DH was going to get nerfed, but I didn't expect Unleash Fel to be one of the targets. Then again I've never played an aggro deck against DH so I don't really have a grasp of how strong it can really be. The other nerf to relics was more predictable, since the relic package is in every DH deck that isn't hyper-aggro.
The Anub nerf was expected, but it doesn't really change much. The combo is still possible with 11 mana by playing Brann first, which slows down the combo for sure, but every Ramp Druid is still going to run it.
I'm indifferent towards the Valishj nerf, but I really like the Boon nerf. Though my issue with it is that it can't be silenced to remove the stats, which is normally possible against really big minions.
Rogue nerfs are fantastic. Both decks are extremely annoying to play against, and often leaves you without counter options.
The DK buffs are great. I'm very happy that they didn't just buff established decks, since it is very possible that DK will become much better with the nerfs to top performing classes.
Rogues still do not have counter options, when you just delay it by 1 turn 30% of the time. That does not change the state of the board enough to make 4 5/8’s that summon 2-5/4’s each, on turn 5/6 a reasonable thing or the fact that they draw 100% deck by turn 9/10 so that your “answer” is just met with another impossible board state the next turn.
Blizz has the design philosophy of “support 4-5 DECKs per expansion”and watch everything else sit & suffer” Warrior is in an absolutely terrible spot and they got ignored…. This looks like a lot on paper but it’s a shell of the actual changes needed to fix their current standard meta.
Unleash Fel nerf is HUGE, this card almost singlehandedly erased aggro from standard. Its still good, but now the matchup went from impossible to just unfavorable. Renathal being gone is another big plus, so aggro is officially back with this patch.
If you had problems with 40 health Renethal playing Aggro before that just means you were a bad player. Forty health was easy to overcome.
100% winrate player i see
Did Blizzard really see that the difference WR in the arena between DK and other classes is from 10 to 30% lol
the buffs to all the death knight cards are just gonna make DK even more OP in arena than it already is, if thats possible.
you didn't see the Arena Updates section?
Surprisingly big patch out of nowhere, might make the game a lot more playable now.
"Dev Comment: This Brann-Anub’Rekhan combo is not a big winrate outlier, but it represents a play pattern we don’t like."
Which is why you'll be removing Brann from standard right? Oh? You're not? You're going to ruin the card because you won't admit Brann is the problem with every one of these degenerate control combos? Was anyone abusing this card without Brann? No? Then this card isn't the problem, now is it?
The sickening thing with the DK buffs is DK is already batshit broken in arena. These buffs will simply increase the problem. Cards like Malignant Horror are arena powerhouses and they just made it BETTER? Oblierate powercreeped into the cheapest hard removal in the game. They claim they're doing something about it in their usual vague way of claiming they're appearing "less frequently", but almost every DK card is excellent in arena because DK has no bad class cards right now.
hah i posted my comment before i read yours! great minds think alike.
Well, it DID have a FEW bad class cards. Unfortunately, almost all of those cards have now been buffed so they're just as OP as the other ones.
I am not sure it was a good idea to remove Whitemane from BGs while Uther/Quests are still around. Now Rivendare is not counterable at all. I guess the meta will be Baron builds for a while.