Blizzard just posted a teaser of the upcoming balance update for both Standard and Battlegrounds! We had a small balance update in Patch 29.2, but it was mostly a bandaid and most of the players were waiting for this bigger update. The current meta is not exactly in a great spot, and it’s not even about some decks completely dominating it, but the main problem is that many classes just suck right now and don’t have a competitively viable deck.
The patch will contain around 30 Constructed card changes. Also, and this is much more surprising, we’re getting some Wild balance changes. Nerfs in that mode are quite rare so players don’t usually expect them. The general goal of this patch is to reduce the power level of hyper-efficient AoE board clears, OTK decks, and powerful Legendary cards with dramatic swings such as Timewinder Zarimi, Reno, Lone Ranger and Wheel of DEATH!!!. This is also just a start, the goal is for this and future patches to increase the “overall feeling of player agency”.
On top of all of that, we have LOTS of Battlegrounds changes. This isn’t surprising, because we just had one of the biggest Battlegrounds updates in history last week.
However, while all of the Battlegrounds changes have been teased, the devs are a bit more cryptic about Standard & Wild changes. They only share a few of them and their general goals of the patch.
Until the full patch notes are released, we don’t know a full list of card changes! We don’t have a release date yet either, all we know is that the patch is “coming soon”. However, the usual schedule is a teaser on Tuesday and a patch on Thursday, which is what I would expect this time around too.
For now, learn more about the patch below:
Standard & Wild
Here’s what we know about the Standard & Wild portion of the update:
Hey everyone!
We’ve got a really big balance patch planned for later this week, with changes to around 30 cards, including buffs and nerfs—and a few Wild changes. Since this patch has different goals from most other patches, I’d like to provide you all with some more context as to what we’re thinking and how we got here.
In this patch, we are attempting to address issues which have cropped up with the overall health of Standard, as opposed to correcting issues with the health of the specific meta like we normally do. Alarm bells started to go off within the design team when we noticed that the power level of Hearthstone didn’t seem to drop much (if at all) after the recent annual rotation. This sparked a lot of internal discussion about certain gameplay patterns in the current meta – particularly hyper-efficient AoE board clears, “OTK” style decks that lack sufficient counterplay, and powerful Legendary cards like Zarimi, Reno Lone Ranger, and Wheel of Death, which tend to either end the game on the spot or create such a dramatic swing in the game state that the game can feel like it is effectively over. While these cards are a lot of fun for the players playing with them, it was clear that those playing against these cards often felt they had little agency in their ability to affect the outcome of the game.
Increasing the overall feeling of player agency is our key focus with this patch, and it will continue to be our key focus in future patches until it feels like the trend of powerful low-agency cards and archetypes has been reversed. We think it’s fine for there to be exciting, dreamy, and lower-agency cards in the game, but not if they’re also the most powerful cards in the game.
In the latest expansion, too many of these lower-agency designs were allowed to become powerful meta contenders. As the lead of Final Design, it’s ultimately my responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen. We hope that this upcoming patch will be a big step towards course-correcting a few of these mistakes, and that by closely monitoring feedback from our players after big changes like this, the game will be a great spot for future expansions in the Year of the Pegasus.
-Aleco, Final Design Lead
Battlegrounds
And here’s a full list of Battlegrounds changes in the usual teaser image. Yes, you see that right, that’s ~70 balance changes in total!
I am particularly excited about the Wild changes – it’s been overdue but I have to say: the Wild meta has had way more variety since the bot bans. Even Shaman is almost non-existent. But there are some cards that are very frustrating to play against. The Zarimi nerf does not surprise me – Priest is powerful in Wild now with Dragon tempo decks. Reno will surely get upped by one on cost. The same action ruined Odyn for Warrior to be sure.
My money is on Open the Waygate getting the Zarimi treatment and only allowing “once per game” but that would destroy the deck, which Blizzard *usually* tries not to do.
But the fanbase hates playing against it so maybe they up the cost of Time Warp or better yet, nerf or ban Grey Sage Parrot, which has an annoying infinite uninteractive loop with Galactic Projection Orb and Ice Block. I didn’t think Miracle Mage could be more annoying to play against…. But alas.
I am also betting hard on some small Rogue nerf. The class is doing well at the top 2 tiers with lots of variety – one wonders if an enabler like say, Secret Passage, will be nerfed to slow down the class consistency.
Demon Hunter, Death Knight, Hunter, Warrior are all suffering in Wild with their best decks rotting in Tier 3. One wonders if buffs are in order but with how DH is doing in Standard, that will be difficult. The last time they balanced Standard a nerf to Order in the Court led to Holy Wrath Paladin’s return. It’s a needle to thread for sure. And I certainly don’t want to see Tony DH again.
All in all – exciting times. Wild is really fun right now, maybe this will curb some of the uninteractive power outliers that scare newcomers out of the format.
Wouldn’t be surprised if they made Reno 10 mana, Wheel 9 mana or added an extra turn, and changed the dragon requirement for Zarimi to something ridiculous like 12 dragons.
I wouldn’t mind if they left Reno (and other highlander cards) checking duplicates at moment of play. I would like his effect to be symmetrical though, as it would be more fitting in the spirit of a duel at high noon: both players left with one spot on the board.
I can’t believe how good they are becoming over time. Smart decision. I am a priest main, and, while I love Zarimi as a card, I hate the deck it is in. Too frustrating to board clear it on repeat, be 30 hp and have a Zarimi, triple drifter and double Zilliax comming out of nowhere. I don’t despise combo nor storm decks in mtg, I do actually love them a lot. But nowadays, it feels like you don’t have to work anymore to assemble those crazy plays. Otk an oppenent used to be a struggle, something you had to fight for, now it is just drop 5 dragons during game and gg.
Seems like a good patch on the way.