The balance update also affects several Forged in the Barrens cards, and makes changes to Battlegrounds.
Last week, Hearthstone lead designer Alec Dawson noted that much-needed balance changes to address the Hearthstone meta's descent into lunacy were on their way, and more details would be coming soon. Now, in a blog post just published, we've got those details—and yes, Deck of Lunacy is being nerfed. Its cost is doubling from 2 to 4 Mana, and hopefully that will be enough to prevent No Minion Mage from being such a regular annoyance on the ladder. (Right now there's a copy of Deck of Lunacy in 22.6 percent of all decks.)
While that's the card enraging players at the moment, Paladins are actually at the top of the win rate charts. They'll be taking a hit when Sword of the Fallen—which plays a Secret from your deck every time you attack with it—loses a point of durability, dropping from 3 to 2.
Watch Post cards, neutrals with powerful defensive abilities that rendered aggro decks basically useless, are taking a hit with Far Watch Post and Mor'shan Watch Post both losing a point of health (dropping from 4 to 3 and 5 to 4 respectively). The more expensive Crossroads Watch Post remains untouched, however.
Pen Flinger, which Ben "RidiculousHat" Goodman called "an annoying little jerk who has long overstayed his welcome" will receive the tweak that Goodman predicted, and will only be able to target minions from now on.
The final Standard balance update affects Jandice Barov, increasing her cost from 5 to 6 Mana. Her ability to summon two random 5-cost minions remains intact. According to the patch notes, "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."
The 20.0.2 patch is set to go live on April 13, which is tomorrow. Here are those changes in handy list format.
Deck of Lunacy:
- Old: [Costs 2] → New: [Costs 4]
Sword of the Fallen:
- Old: 1 Attack, 3 Durability → New: 1 Attack, 2 Durability
Jandice Barov:
- Old: [Costs 5] → New: [Costs 6]
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.
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
The patch also brings balance updates for Battlegrounds. The state of play in Bob's Tavern may not be quite as contentious at the moment, but there are plenty of updates anyway.
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: [Costs 1] Remove a friendly minion. Discover a random one from a Tavern Tier lower. → New: [Costs 0] 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: 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.
Finally, the typically lengthy collection of bug fixes and game improvements. Here's the full list, and for more details visit playhearthstone.com.
- Fixed a bug where Sunwell Initiate’s Divine Shield 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 an incorrect tooltip stating: “Not useable in Wild format”.
- Fixed a bug where the Master of All starter quest would grant a random Darkmoon Legendary instead of a Barrens one.
- 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.
