Hearthstone’s first round of United in Stormwind balance changes now live

Well, that didn’t take long. After two weeks of monitoring, the United in Stormwind meta devs are taking some major swings with the nerf bat.

The Hearthstone balance team isn’t messing around with Patch 21.0.3, which went live today. Il’gynoth is one of eight cards spanning a plethora of classes that felt the wrath of the dev team this morning. But the nerfs presented in this patch aren’t unreasonable.

In a dev statement accompanying the official patch notes, the team said it’d like to slow the game down by a turn or two. If you’ve played Standard over the past few weeks, you’ve probably had your head blown off by Quest Mage much earlier than you’d expect. If the nerfs put forward by the team do their job, this sort of thing shouldn’t happen.

A large part of the criticism surrounding the latest expansion has revolved around the new Questline decks and how they can potentially feel like your opponent is playing Solitaire. Quest Mage, in particular, is a deck that allows you to borderline ignore your opponent as you work toward your combo.

If these nerfs do their job, playing against decks like Quest Mage should feel like you have more of a say in the matter with regard to victory.

• Incanters Flow – Increased from two mana to three
• Il’gynoth – Increased from four mana to six, Attack and Health increased from 2/6 to 4/8.
• Darkglare – Increased from two mana to three. Attack and Health increased from 2/3 to 3/4.
• Battleground Battlemaster – Increased from five mana to six.
• Kolkar Pack Runner – Increased from two mana to three. Attack and Health increased from 2/3 to 3/4.
• Granite Forgeborn – Attack and Health changed from 4/5 to 4/4.
• Conviction (all ranks) – Increased from one mana to two.
• Flesh Giant – Increased from eight mana to nine.

You can check out a full overview of the patch notes, including the Hearthstone Battlegrounds changes, here. You can log in to Hearthstone right now to test out the changes for yourself.