Text taken from their link on Reddit.
Hello again, mortals!
Our main goals in this update were to: Buff some of the most underplayed core cards. Increase the overall power of Nature's removal suite. Lower the overall powerlevel of Rune decks (especially the Magic archetype). Add viable answers to countering sleep.
We're hopeful that these changes will shake the metagame up at all levels of play and keep the game feeling fresh. I want to stress that changes to the core set are frequent, if any of the changes nerf something too hard we will revisit it and re-balance it.
Balance Changes
Deception
- Cutthroat Insight changed from "Look at your opponent's hand and pull one of their cards into your hand." to "Target opponent reveals their hand. Pull one of their cards into your hand."
This change allows ward on a god to protect from Cutthroat Insight. We will continue to closely monitor this card as we're aware of the overall community sentiment toward it.
- Thalia, Charite Temptress reworked from 4 mana "Roar: Draw cards until you have as many cards as your opponent's unused mana gems" to 6 mana "Roar: Pull any spells in your opponent's hand that cost 2 or less onto the bottom of their deck".
Thalia was the least played Core card overall and we weren't happy with the design of her. This change is aimed at providing an answer to Rune decks that stall on a large number of Runes in their hand. This is also one of the first designed cards that we're expecting to fill an important role when we have introduced mechanics that allow players to access cards outside of their main deck.
Light
- Pacifism changed from "Each creature with strength 4 or more has their strength set to 2." to "Remove sleep from all friendly creatures. Each creature with strength 4 or more has their strength set to 2."
Pacifism was the least played Light common card. We thought it was a good fit to allow Light decks to counter sleep effects as it also has another use that renders it unlikely to be a dead card if your opponent isn't playing sleep effects.
Magic
- Frey, Archmage of Selene changed from "Roar: Foresee 6. Draw 2 cards and set their cost to 1." to "Roar: Foresee 6. Draw 2 cards and set their cost to 2."
Frey provided some extremely explosive turns whereby Magic players would sit on the bag of tricks for most of the game and then play Frey on 8 mana, into bag of tricks + a super powerful 9/8 mana card. We still want Frey to be extremely explosive, however players will now need to wait a turn to play the cards they draw.
Nature
- Lightning Strike changed from 4 mana to 3 mana.
Lightning Strike was underplayed as it was slightly overcosted at 4 mana. If this form of removal is too strong for Nature we may tone back the amount of damage/burn that Lightning Strike provides.
- Arrow of Rage reworked from 5 mana "Add three mana locks to both player's mana gems." to 1 mana."Deal X damage to an enemy creature where X is equal to the strength of a random creature you control".
Arrow of Rage was the most underplayed Nature rare card and we thought the flavour matched a design we wanted to push through earlier to help support Nature. We're expecting this spell to be highly included in midrange and aggressive nature decks and we will closely monitor its overall power level.
Neutral
- Traveling Bard changed from Give a random friendly creature +2/+1." to "Give a random other friendly creature +2/+1."
Traveling Bard was previously nerfed to allow it to randomly buff itself, this was too harsh of a nerf so we're reverting that change.
- Rune of Life changed from "Heal 6 to a friendly creature and your god." to "Heal 3 to a friendly creature and your god."
Rune's have been extremely dominant at the top ranks with some players achieving above 80% winrates. We've targeted the Rune of Life for our nerf as our main change as we believe that the Rune decks are currently allowed to be too greedy due to the immense amount of burst healing that the Rune of Life provides.
- Svart Basilisk changed from 5 health "Roar: Remove 1 durability from your opponent's relic." to 4 health "Roar: Remove sleep from target friendly creature. Remove 1 durability from your opponent's relic.".
Svart Basilisk was the most underplayed neutral core common card by a significant margin (seeing play in less than 0.3% of decks). We've added the ability for this card to remove sleep off of a friendly creature, whilst maintaining its ability to hit relics. This is a targeted nerf to Memory Charm Deception decks that continuely sleep an enemy creature until they use Anti-Magic expert to finish you off. At the same time this is an indirect nerf to other sleep cards such as Demogorgon. We also expect that if the Basilisk is commonly played that Slayer War decks will suffer a hit due to the relic destruction.
We will be closely monitoring the impact of Svart Basilisk on the metagame and will be making further changes and adjustments to more cards effecting sleep if necessary.
I'll see you next time, mortals! - Petrify
Rune of life kept some of my big guys alive. Now it's no where near as good!
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