14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard has just rolled out a fresh update for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, its free-to-play online trading card game, the final one before the upcoming open beta stage.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft was revealed to the world last year and surprised quite a lot of Blizzard fans with the novel direction it was taking the Warcraft series.
Since then, a closed beta has been held by the studio in order to try out its systems and make sure the cards are balanced right.
Now, ahead of the upcoming open beta stage for Hearthstone, Blizzard has confirmed that one final balance update is now available for download.
Quite a lot of big changes are included in the new patch, most of them with details and motivations from Blizzard itself. Check out the full changelog below, via Battle.net.
- Unleash the Hounds’ mana cost is now 2 (down from 4) Unleash the Hounds was intended to give Hunters their own form of AoE and to have synergy with other beast cards, but its old cost was too prohibitive.
- Pyroblast’s mana cost is now 10 (up from 8) The 8-cost Pyroblast made for an un-interactive experience where the Mage only needed to do 10 damage during the course of a game and then double Pyroblast you for the win. We want Mages to be more interactive with the opponent to achieve victory, rather than delay the game until they can Pyroblast.
- Blood Imp is now a 0/1 and now reads: Stealth. At the end of your turn, give another random friendly minion +1 Health. The Warlock has three very strong 1-cost minions and that made the Warlock rush deck slightly stronger than we were comfortable with.
- Warsong Commander has been reworked and now reads: Whenever you play a minion with 3 or less Attack, give it Charge.
- Charge (the spell, not the keyword) has been reworked and now costs 3 mana. The card’s new power reads: “Give a friendly minion +2 Attack and Charge”. Both of these cards were key components in “One Turn Kill” or “OTK” decks that kill your opponent in one turn without requiring any cards on the board. We want the game to be about playing minions and fighting for board control rather than just waiting until you can play your big combo and win in one turn with no interaction from your opponent.
- Abusive Sergeant now reads: Battlecry: Give a minion +2 Attack until end of turn. Abusive Sergeant was changed to make its power the same as the Dark Iron Dwarf and to give it additional versatility.
- Dark Iron Dwarf’s buff now only lasts until the end of the turn. This change was made to reduce the Dark Iron Dwarf’s overall power slightly. We also wanted to make the Battlecry effect the same as Abusive Sergeant‘s as to not force you to permanently buff one of your opponent’s creatures.
- Defender of Argus is now a 2/3 (down from 3/3) Defender of Argus was a card that found itself automatically included in many decks due to its power and stats. We want players to have an option of what cards they put in their decks, so cards that feel like they must be in all decks (especially Neutral ones) are not ideal.
- Novice Engineer is now a 1/1 (down from 1/2) The Novice Engineer was played in most non-rush decks (and even some rush decks) due to its cost and power. Similar in reasoning to our Defender of Argus change, we want players to have an option of what cards they put in their decks.
- Sylvanas Windrunner’s mana cost is now 6 (up from 5) Sylvanas had power and stats that made it a bit too powerful compared to other 5-cost cards, which made it automatically included in many decks. We want players to have an option of what cards they put in their decks, so cards that feel like they must be in all decks (especially Neutral ones) are not ideal.
The new patch can already be downloaded via the Battle.net client. The Hearthstone open beta is set to debut in the near future.