19.4.1 Patch Notes – Hysteria Works Only on Enemy Minions, Duels Balance Changes – January 28

A new, smaller patch was just announced.

The biggest change is Hysteria now only being able to target enemy minions – it was obviously made to answer the Wretched Tiller combos in Wild. While it’s also a nerf to the card in general (e.g. you can no longer Apotheosis your own minion and play Hysteria on it to force some healing), it shouldn’t really affect its overall power level. Situations in which you targeted your own minion were pretty uncommon and the card should still be good. However, players will still get full Dust refund for the card if they want to get rid of it.

On top of that, Duels is getting a couple of balance changes, with nerfs to Demon Hunter & Hunter, as well as buffs to Priest & Paladin.

The patch releases tomorrow, on January 28.

Check out full patch notes below:

The 19.4.1 patch, arriving on January 28, includes a change for Hysteria from the Darkmoon Races Mini-Set, balance adjustments for Duels, and a handful of game improvements!

Standard Balance Updates

Hysteria

  • Old: Choose a minion. It attacks random minions until it dies.  New: Choose an enemy minion. It attacks random minions until it dies.
PRIEST_WARLOCK_YOP_006_enUS_Hysteria-61944.pngcardchanges_arrow.pngPRIEST_WARLOCK_YOP_006_enUS_Hysteria-61944.png

Hysteria will be eligible for a full dust refund for 2 weeks after the 19.4.1 patch goes live.

Duels Balance Updates

HERO POWER UPDATES

Outlander

  • Old: [Passive] After you play the left- or right-most card, gain 1 Attack this turn.  New: [Costs 1] After you play the left or right-most card in your hand, gain +1 Attack this turn.
DEMONHUNTER_PVPDR_DMF_DemonHunterp1_enUS_Outlander-66729.pngcardchanges_arrow.pngDEMONHUNTER_PVPDR_DMF_DemonHunterp1_enUS_Outlander-66729.png

Death Games

  • Old: Trigger a minion’s Deathrattle.  New: Trigger a random friendly minion’s Deathrattle.
HUNTER_PVPDR_DMF_Hunterp1_enUS_DeathGames-66733.pngcardchanges_arrow.pngHUNTER_PVPDR_DMF_Hunterp1_enUS_DeathGames-66733.png

SIGNATURE TREASURE UPDATES

Bonecrusher

  • Old: [Costs 6]  New: [Beast, Costs 8]
    • Dev Comment: Turns out Bonecrusher is a silly rabbit.
HUNTER_PVPDR_SCH_Huntert2_enUS_Bonecrusher-65088.pngcardchanges_arrow.pngHUNTER_PVPDR_SCH_Huntert2_enUS_Bonecrusher-65088.png

Fractured Spirits

  • Old: [Costs 5]  New: [Costs 4]
PRIEST_PVPDR_SCH_Priestt1_enUS_FracturedSpirits-65089.pngcardchanges_arrow.pngPRIEST_PVPDR_SCH_Priestt1_enUS_FracturedSpirits-65089.png

Royal Greatsword

  • Old: [Costs 6]  New: [Costs 5]
PALADIN_PVPDR_SCH_Paladint1_enUS_RoyalGreatsword-64953.pngcardchanges_arrow.pngPALADIN_PVPDR_SCH_Paladint1_enUS_RoyalGreatsword-64953.png

Herald of the Scaled Ones

  • Now has the Dragon tag.
PRIEST_PVPDR_YOP_PriestT2_enUS_HeraldoftheScaledOnes-67393.pngcardchanges_arrow.pngPRIEST_PVPDR_YOP_PriestT2_enUS_HeraldoftheScaledOnes-67393.png

TREASURE POOL UPDATES

  • Cannibalism has moved from Passive Treasure pool 1 to pool 2
  • Sandy Surprise has been removed from the Passive Treasures pool.

Miscellaneous Updates & Game Improvements

  • Fixed a bug where Collection Achievement progress could get out of sync with the current contents of your collection.
    • Dev Comment: You will still never lose credit for an Achievement once it’s been completed.
  • Fixed a bug where Arena could fail to load for new players.
  • Fixed a Duels bug where the animation for Harvest Time! would play twice.
  • Fixed a Duels bug where Shadow Word: Void would summon minions based on the target minion’s default Health rather than current Health remaining.
  • Fixed a visual bug where notifications would persist for the Journal after completed Achievements had been claimed.

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Stonekeep

A Hearthstone player and writer from Poland, Stonekeep has been in a love-hate relationship with Hearthstone since Closed Beta. Over that time, he has achieved many high Legend climbs and infinite Arena runs. He's the current admin of Hearthstone Top Decks.

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19 Comments

  1. JoyDivision
    January 29, 2021 at 3:25 AM

    Bonecrusher = Text Box Buff 😀

  2. Rickert von F
    January 27, 2021 at 1:17 PM

    “Trigger a random friendly minion’s Deathrattle.”

    If this picks any random minion — i.e. even one without a deathrattle — then it’s a big deal. If it always hits something with deathrattle, then it seems pretty mild to me. But, this and the Bonecrusher nerf and the removal of Sandy Surprise all combined ought to make deathrattle Hunter a little less annoying.

    • Pandamonium
      January 27, 2021 at 3:04 PM

      The way they word things usually, it must default to something with deathrattle.

      • Rickert von F
        January 27, 2021 at 4:05 PM

        Is that true if it’s random? I can’t think of a similar example, like “random friendly minion with X” I think you’re probably right, but that just seems like a weak nerf, since there’s usually only one deathrattle to target, anyway. Or, it’s easy enough to set it up that way, to guarantee it hits the one you want. It won’t be any different 95% of the time.

        • Stonekeep - Site Admin
          January 27, 2021 at 6:58 PM

          Yes, it will only target Deathrattle minions, it can’t “hit” a non-Deathrattle minions. Unless they made an exception just for this Hero Power 🙂

  3. Banaani
    January 27, 2021 at 1:10 PM

    Hysteria change is good as it was really limiting design space as if they changed Wretched Tiller they couldn’t have ever made any on attack effects for priest, warlock or neutral.

  4. MrPoison
    January 27, 2021 at 12:33 PM

    The nerf to hysteria feels like punishing the gun for killing a person instead punishing who pulled the trigger.

    • Numbskull420
      January 27, 2021 at 2:49 PM

      I think they made a good call here considered Hysteria is the new card that initiated a Wild otk deck, I mean we could of seen Blizz completely kill off a card like Tiller or Deathspeaker, being unable to target your own minions is no big deal in my opinion. All in all Hysteria is still a good card and yes I know about Apotheosis losing value but that’s about the only time you target your own minion.

    • Pandamonium
      January 27, 2021 at 3:07 PM

      ???Someone who loves broken gameplay??? Trying to figure out what you’re suggesting.

      • Pandamonium
        January 27, 2021 at 3:09 PM

        And yeah lifesteal is good and everything but can for sure be OP if interactions like this are too easy. They fix an op apotheosis problem with this change too. Great job

      • MrPoison
        January 27, 2021 at 4:37 PM

        Idk, I’m not designer nor developer but maybe doing some balances to stop the combo without killing the card and withouth nerfing both classes that are doing terrible in the current meta would have been nicer, maybe making hysteria unable to target Immune minions or giving Hysteria a DW Mad aspect effect like where it can attack all minions but only once or until it dies would have been way better.

        But what do I know, I’m not the one getting paid shit ton of money to develop a game with a balanced content.

        • Stonekeep - Site Admin
          January 27, 2021 at 7:29 PM

          Just saying, but I think that making it only be able to attack the same minion once is a bigger nerf than not being able to target own minions. Or at least very similar.

          Yes, you’re taking away versatility, but you’re also making it way more awkward against a lot of boards. I cleared the board so many times because it was able to get extra hits against the same minion. Maybe it’s just me, but I rarely ended up using it on my own minion (granted, I mostly played it in Warlock, so I obviously couldn’t combo it with Apotheosis).

          • JoyDivision
            January 29, 2021 at 3:29 AM

            Out of the 7 times I played the card so far, 5 times was on my ‘Apotheosis-ed’ minion. The first thing I thought when I saw the nerf was ‘f**k now it’s no emergency lifegain against aggro anymore’. So, yeah … 😉

        • Numbskull420
          January 27, 2021 at 9:30 PM

          From my point of view this nerf needed to kill this otk combo regardless of what card they touched, that being said I suppose there were other solutions without them tweaking a brand new card, like adding “On first attack deal 2 to enemy hero” to Tiller or adding the “Can’t be targeted by spells or Hero Powers” to the Immune keyword it self.

          I’m still surprised they haven’t giving a real keyword for that yet like Spellguard or something, there’s an unofficial term called Elusive in HS wiki. Once upon a time Lifesteal wasn’t a keyword.

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      January 27, 2021 at 7:00 PM

      I honestly agree, but the problem is that nerfing Tiller is more like a band-aid. Hysteria can break other “on attack” triggers in the future in a similar way.

      That said, I think that band-aid would be fine for now, and then Hysteria could be nerfed when they plan to release some powerful synergy that would break Wild.

      • MrPoison
        January 27, 2021 at 10:39 PM

        I see it otherwise, “on attack” mechanic has been barely explored and this could’ve open new design for future archetypes on both classes, the only way I see this could’ve broken the game is with effect that directly damage the enemy (like tiller did) or protecting yours (maybe getting bizzarre amounts of armor).

        I don’t want to sound harsh but we’ve seen these kind of “design limitations” excuses before, one year after Prophet Velen was HoF for this reason we haven’t got a card that could’ve broken it on standard.

      • Kethcup
        January 28, 2021 at 3:34 PM

        really honestly “immune” mechanics need to be changed.

        The only reason the OTK worked was cause of cards like Deathspeaker.

      • JoyDivision
        January 29, 2021 at 3:33 AM

        The thing is … Blizzard more than once stated that uninteractive combo OTKs aren’t their thing. So I asume, Tiller (and all other on attack triggers imho) are meant to trigger once, because outside of combos (and windfury) there is just 1 attack per turn.

        tl;dr: They should change ALL on attack triggers to ‘only triggers once’. Problem solved, Hysteria unnerfed.

        And I think the ‘design space limitations’ are marginal.