16.0.8 Balance Update - Coming This Week!

UPDATE (4:30 p.m. PT, January 9): The patch is now live for desktop and mobile.

Welcome to a new year in the tavern, everyone! We have a balance update in the works that will go live later this week which includes the following changes, primarily for Standard and Battlegrounds:

Warlock

  • Fiendish Rites : Mana cost increased from (3) to (4).

Warrior

  • Scion of Ruin : Mana cost increased from (3) to (4) .
  • Ancharrr : Durability reduced from (3) to (2) .

Shaman

  • Dragon’s Pack : Now reads, “…If you’ve Invoked twice, give them +2/+2 .” (reduced from +3/+3).
  • Invocation of Frost : Mana cost increased from (1) to (2).

Rogue

  • Necrium Apothecary : Mana cost increased from (4) to (5).

Neutral

  • Dragonqueen Alexstrasza: Battlecry effect can no longer generate Dragonqueen Alexstrasza.

*Once the update is live, adjusted cards will be eligible for a full Arcane Dust refund for two weeks.

Battlegrounds

This update includes several adjustments and gets more Heroes brawling in Bob’s Tavern than ever before! Further Battlegrounds balance changes are coming very soon, in addition to the exciting new content we have in the pipeline… we’ll have more to share in the near future!

Heroes

Shudderwock

  • Burbling: Cost reduced from (2) to (1) .

Queen Wagtoggle

  • Wax Warband : Give a random friendly Mech, Demon, Murloc and Beast +2 Attack . (instead of +1 Health)

Infinite Toki

  • Temporal Tavern : Cost reduced from (2) to (1) . Now reads, “Refresh Bob’s Tavern. Include a Minion from a higher Tavern Tier.”

Patches the Pirate

  • Has returned to the Battlegrounds Hero Pool.

  • Fire the Cannons! : At the start of next combat, deal 4 damage to two random enemy minions. (increased from 3 damage)

Pyramad

  • Has returned to the Battlegrounds Hero Pool.

  • Brick by Brick : Give a random friendly minion +3 Health . (increased from +2 Health)

Minions

Golden Soul Juggler

  • After a friendly Demon dies, deal 3 damage to a random enemy minion twice . (instead of 6 damage once)

Bug Fixes and Game Improvements

  • Battlegrounds : Selfless Hero’s Deathrattle will now only affect minions that do not already have Divine Shield.

  • Arena : The appearance rate of cards in the draft has been updated to ensure class balance remains close to the ideal 50% win-rate. Specifically, the win-rate of Druid, Hunter, and Paladin should now be decreased. The win-rate of Priest, Rogue, Shaman and Warlock should now be increased. Card appearance rates for Mage and Warrior remain untouched.

17 Likes

Is this an out-of-season April Fool’s joke?

20 Likes

Selfless Hero plus ANYTHING is going to be hella powerful now

6 Likes

I am looking forward to new heroes being added in to Battlegrounds. It has been a blast!

10 Likes

+3 health to random minion seem kinda pointless. If you are going to give the one guy +2 attack to all diff types of minions at least let the +3 health target something.

16 Likes

Does the return of Patches and Pyramad mean that there will be 26 heroes in the pool now?

Toki returning to her initial beta version is interesting.

The Constructed balance changes seem reasonable, nothing that apparently nukes any deck from existence, but power levels are being reigned in.

Is this it? No priest nerfs? REALLY? Oh my F’ing god. Time to dust literally everything and craft braindead ress-priest deck -.-

Edit; typo.

14 Likes

wow finally. I like this change as it would make specific Demon builds more viable.

8 Likes

tears for dragonqueen, my only hope as mage. was so fun getting multiples

3 Likes

They “nerfed” Dragonqueen too soon. I still wanted to use her some more.

Ps. Where are the nerfs to all Galakronds as was announced on twitter?

4 Likes

Is it safe to assume that applies outside of Battlegrounds as well? That behavior always seemed inconsistent to me.

5 Likes

Um can you not read? They literally nerfed the problematic cards? We’re you expecting them to nerf the actual hero’s themselves??

1 Like

As if golden soul juggler wasn’t cancer enough as it is. Thanks Obama.

3 Likes

While I’m here though, where are the dragons? I mean this is the dragon expansion right? So why no show in battlegrounds?

Pirates and elementals too I guess.

4 Likes

Fiendish Rights seems a bit weird of a nerf, but whatever. Everything else I’ll take. With my gold copies I got, that’s over 2,000 dust for me.

1 Like

and yet you still haven’t fixed the back to back fighting in battlegrounds…

6 Likes

she’s still usable, just because she doesn’t generate copies of herself, she is still powerful.

2 Likes

Good and well thought nerfs for standard, Gracias !

What if i have one of the nerfed cards as golden?do i gain the full value of a golden dust? (3200 dust)

2 Likes