We recently talked about communicating more clearly with our players and it's time to show you we meant it. We had some discussion recently about balance changes targeting some Rings of Immortality outliers and to take another stab at Vampire Historian after our last change didn't quite land right.
We're looking at patching this week but won't be able to do so until later in the week. With the Kryptik Gaming Boneyard Shuffle tournament on Saturday (which you should go sign up for if you haven't yet), we don't want to make changes right before the event. We'll be pushing some balance changes live tomorrow morning at 10:00AM Pacific/5:00PM GMT to address balance concerns while still allowing time for tournament players to get adequate testing in.
Vampire Historian
4[R]R → 3[R]R
2/3 → 1/3
We missed the mark in making our first pass at Vampire Historian. Our goal was to lower the card's win rate just a bit, as it was performing very well. Doing so in a way that messed with everyone's mana curves was not our best idea. This change should allow Historian to still occupy the 3 slot while helping to mitigate its impact in games where it's not answered as promptly. We'll continue to monitor this card moving forward.
Media Autocam
Starting Energy: 1🗲 → 2🗲
Activation Cost: 3🗲 → 4🗲
Yellow-Green control has been a deck that has had success on ladder and in tournament play since the Rings of Immortality expansion release and we perhaps waited a bit longer than we should have to address this deck. Making this change to Autocam still allows for the initial draw to come after 2 spells while slowing down its value generation in longer games.
Anhelli
★[G]GG → ★+1[G]GG
Anhelli is a very interesting card. While we are not opposed to the idea of removal that is as versatile as Anhelli, this should come at more of a cost than "always remains tempo-neutral" so we're increasing the cost by 1 to add a bit more of a downside to the incredible utility this card provides. This should also slow down the Yellow-Green control midgame just a bit.
Weapon Check
All minions have -3/-0 → All minions have -4/-0
As the first card to be adjusted via our live balance system, Weapon Check saw a nerf previously for the incredible frustration it caused to a large portion of our players. We said that we were watching the card closely and feel that the nerf was a bit of an overstep. While we think continuing to avoid the more binary "lock to 0" nature of the card's previous implementation is still the route to go, we feel that the current level of this card leaves a bit to be desired. This change should provide Weapon Check with a slight bump in usability while not reverting to the more disliked style of effect it had on release.
Jaza'eri Arquebus
4/3 → 4/2
Jaza'eri Arquebus provides a lot of stats for its cost. While we do like the design space of Jaza'eri leaving behind a Parsa Divinity Cannon, we want to make the first minion less difficult to deal with to leave you more answers to the second.
Call from the Grave
Awaken: Deal 4 damage → Awaken: Deal 3 damage
Green-Purple Spirit decks have been on our radar due to a relatively high win rate combined with a relatively high play rate. While we don't think the deck is very far outside of where it should be in power level, we do feel the deck has a bit too much reach to close out games with a top decked Call. This should help reduce the direct damage that comes down in the late game of Green-Purple Spirit matchups.
Guise of Phobos
Minions that Threaten this have -2/-0 → Minions that Threaten this have -1-0
Guise of Phobos has been over-performing in draft play. Constructed play has also seen Red-Yellow aggro decks using this card as a finisher with Volition. While we feel the latter use case is one we still want to monitor closely, we feel this change should primarily help draft players in actually removing the minion buffed by Guise of Phobos.
Bridgeway Troll
▽BBB: Give all your minions → BB: Adjacent minions get
This change breaks the "Riding with Eolis" puzzle and we will have that fixed in the next patch.
Mono-Blue decks continue to show strongly in both ladder and tournament play. The constant through multiple iterations of these decks over the past few months has been Bridgeway Troll allowing players to ignore a large part of the combat system to find damage around otherwise good blocking by the opponent. This change should allow Troll's impact to be a bit less decisive and allows us to go back to having it usable on turn 4 by removing a gem from its activation cost.
Refunds are available for copies of Media Autocam, Anhelli, Call from the Grave, Guise of Phobos, and Bridgeway Troll crafted after October 1.
We're updating a few cards and paths we missed in our initial pass on text updates for the use of Sunrise/Sundown and the expanded use of the Threaten keyword. These changes don't represent any functional difference but should help unify their text formatting.
Sunrise/Sundown
The following cards have been updated to make use of the Sunrise and/or Sundown keywords:
Wailing Yokai
Born-Again
Parsa Immortal
Compulsory Curse
Threaten
The following card has been updated to make of the Threaten keyword:
Hekate's Wheel
Path Updates
The following Paths have been updated to make use of the Sunrise and/or Sundown keywords:
Coliseum of Strife
Journey of Souls
Turn of Seasons
Disk of Circadia
NOTE: Disk of Circadia has also had its Day and Night abilities renamed to Light and Shadow, respectively. This was done to avoid confusion around the use of Day and Night when they are so close in meaning to Sunrise and Sundown. Disk of Circadia's in-match icon will continue to use the "D" and "N" lettering until we patch later this week.