The Standard team’s quote:
Dev Comment: The Heroes of StarCraft Mini-Set has brought lots of new and exciting decks across a variety of classes and all three factions. The response to the Mini-Set has been great, so we’re doing a light patch here, only hitting the most extreme play patterns. […] These changes should help the meta continue developing on its own. Along the same lines, we did not want to use this patch window to make big buffs
The Battlegrounds team’s quote:
Dev Comment: There are a lot of changes this patch, with the general goal of providing more options for play. We did this by lowering the power of some popular cards and strategies (like ‘Loc Prince, Ultraviolet Ascendant, and Beetles), while buffing some underrepresented archetypes (like Demons, Dragons, and Naga). We also brought back some old favorites to open up more synergies. We have more content on the way and are looking forward to sharing more soon. We’ll see you in the Tavern!
Such radically different approaches and philosophies. The Standard team needs to learn from battlegrounds. What the playerbase needs isn’t a meta statistically balanced. People talk about wanting a balanced meta but they don’t actually mean it. What they want is constant novelty, a fresh meta and the opportunity to try out new things that might have not worked a couple weeks ago. That’s what keeps people engaged. How many cards in Standard are about to rotate and never saw play? How many archetypes? How is protoss any better off with a +1 health on a card almost no one used? Massive W for the battlegrounds team and massive L for the Standard team with this update.