I’ll be perfectly honest, I’m a bit surprised. I was pretty sure that Patch 22.2 will drop tomorrow – on January 11. The date fits the usual schedule (patch X.2 releasing roughly a month after the expansion) and the 11th is also when the Alterac Valley event is concluded (players will get a Diamond version of either Drek'Thar or Vanndar Stormpike).
However, we’ve just learned that the patch is coming soon, “but not as soon as people think”. It’s quite clear that by “what people think”, DeckTech means this Tuesday. If I had to make another guess now, I would say that based on this message, the next Tuesday (January 18) seems to be a likely patch d ate. Luckily, it sounds like Blizzard has something planned “leading up” to the patch. Maybe it’s another event, some new feature, or maybe he just means that they will tease patch notes early.
X.2 patches are generally major Battlegrounds updates. Team 5 wants to space them out a bit from expansion’s launch to not blend those two together, so they release them roughly a month after each set. X.2 patches usually shift the Battlegrounds meta a lot by starting big events, adding new minion types, new Heroes, or just refreshing/rebalancing the minion pool heavily. However, that’s not necessarily everything – it’s still a major patch, so it might contain stuff for other game modes, like Constructed balance changes, new Mercenaries, new Duels treasures/passives, or Arena microadjustments.
Lol, the DeckTech symbol. The next big patch is coming soon, but not as soon as people think. We’ve still got something planned that leads up to the next patch.
— Nicholas “DeckTech” Weiss (@hsdecktech) January 10, 2022
