Balance Update in Patch 18.4 – Nerfs to Guardian Animals & Tortollan Pilgrim + Bug Fixes & Improvements

On top of the Masquerade Ball event, Elementals in Battlegrounds and all of the other goodies, we’re also getting some Constructed changes. Tomorrow (September 29), two cards will get nerfed:

The first change is quite obvious – Guardian Druid was a pretty powerful deck ever since the expansion’s launch, and recently it started becoming quite problematic again, especially in higher ranks. According to the latest Vicious Syndicate report, it was the most popular deck in Legend, with up to 22% play rate in top 1k. Increasing the cost of deck’s biggest pay-off card, which was often crucial to drop on T7, will definitely hit it hard. It’s too early to tell whether it will still be viable after the nerf, but it will definitely be much weaker.

The second change is a nerf to so-called Turtle Mage, which basically kills the deck in its current form. It relied on Tortollan Pilgrim to keep casting copies of Potion of Illusion while the player kept dropping 1 mana 1/1 Battlecry minions. It will no longer be possible after the changes, since the combo will only work twice at most – after that, no more Potions will be left in the deck.

You can disenchant those two cards for their full crafting cost for the next 2 weeks.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

And here’s a list of other, smaller things coming in tomorrow’s patch!

  • Fixed a Battlegrounds bug where Micro Mummy would cause a crash when tripled. Micro Mummy has returned to the Battlegrounds minion pool.
  • Collection manager pages can now be scrolled with a mouse wheel on Mac and PC.
  • Galakrond will no longer lose its partially invoked status when being shuffled back into your deck from hand.
  • The mana reduction from Nature Studies is now cleared if the spell is countered.
  • Golden Sightless Watcher’s history tile now correctly shows the gold/non-gold status of the discover options, rather than forcing them to all be gold.
  • Mystical Mirage now restores your original hand correctly at the end of the turn when double cast from cards like Electra Stormsurge.

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.

Check out Stonekeep on Twitter!

Leave a Reply

7 Comments

  1. PitLord
    September 29, 2020 at 4:33 AM

    Why they always nerf class cards? It’s not Rexxar fault, why raise the cost to 7 to 8 of a dual class card.

    If you want to nerf druid? Good, i’ll teach you how to do: 1) Lake trasher must cost 6 (raise the stat if you want) so bye bye aoe; 2) Nerf the most broken common card broomstick to work only with minion that cost 4 or less and bye bye rush dream dragons.
    Now this it’s an elegant way to nerf druid without touch a single class card.

    P.S. Incoming dust for a golden tortolla šŸ˜€

  2. Noelle
    September 28, 2020 at 2:42 PM

    Glad I never crafted tortollan pilgrim. Sticking with dragons in my highlander mage now.

  3. AmbitionStorm
    September 28, 2020 at 10:38 AM

    Blizz: New expantion. We will make paladins op.
    Me: Hmm… As a priest player even since HS came out, kinda seems unfair, those paladins are top tier alot, but ok, i guess.
    Blizz: priests have a nice winrate vs paladins, we nerf them and any deck that stands a chance vs paladins.
    Me: hmmm… ok, well, guess i will play guardian druid.
    Blizz: Another nerf, to more classes that counter paladins. We will ignore paladins though.
    Me: ….
    Blizz: ok, ok, another nerf, we will now nerf guardian druids and mages.
    Me: Yeah, no, cya next expantion.

    • IRthrPlayMTG
      September 28, 2020 at 10:59 AM

      Shaman: -_-

    • Solojazz
      September 28, 2020 at 12:30 PM

      Lol what? One of guardian druids biggest counters is Palidan and control priest is favored into Palidan. As a priest fan you should be excited about these nerfs. Plus the play style of all Druid archetypes running the guardian animals package was already getting a bit stale. Iā€™m glad they are addressing the problem sooner rather than later.

    • TardisGreen
      September 28, 2020 at 1:59 PM

      You have to be some special kind of clueless if you think Paladins are OP now or ever. Next expansion is gonna be anything different. Learn to play.