Unlike most card games, Blizzard’s incredibly popular card game Hearthstone has the ability to edit and change their cards after printing. It is one of the core ways that being wholly digital has benefitted them. With Patch 6.1.3, Blizzard is addressing a few of the most powerful cards as well as some of the weaker ones as well. Another unique position to Hearthstone is that in addition to having rotating sets, they have a “core” set that will always be available to play in the Standard metagame. This is usually the focus on the balance changes, as Blizzard has a past history of simply waiting until Adventure and Expansion cards rotate out of Standard.
The Shaman’s Rockbiter Weapon is getting a one mana cost increase. With a lot of cheap creatures that the Shaman could cast, such as its hero power totems, Rockbiter had a tendency of being too efficient of a remove spell. At 2 mana, this should be curb while allowing for explosive plays. Tuskar Totemic has been a card that causes a lot of headaches, as he had been able to summon powerful totems such as Thing From Below and Mana Tide Totem. Now, he can only summon your basic totems.
For Hunters, very few spells impacted a board as hard as Call of the Wild. A simple change, its mana is increasing from 8 to 9. It will still be an absolute bomb in most games, but will not be so much as an auto-include in every hunter deck.
Warriors are having two spells changed. In line with a lot of other changes this patch, Execute is going from 1 mana to 2. Everyone knows how bad it feels to have a Whirlwind + Execute combo on your Ragnaros, and this will make it slightly less efficient to pull off. In addition, the Warrior spell Charge has been altered. Its mana cost has been lowered from 3 to 1, and no longer gives +2 damage. The creature can also not target heroes, making it a much more efficient removal spell than before.
If you have been playing against aggro decks for awhile, you definitely are aware of Abusive Sargent. The cost-efficient 1 mana 2/1 has an amazing battle cry that gives +2 damage to a minion. Dropping its power from 2 to 1 makes it rely more on that battle cry, instead of being a card you play as soon as you get it.
And finally, Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End has gone through a minor rework. It’s a card that when activated, it will cast a random spell at a random target for each spell cast that game. Essentially, you sit back and pray you win, or at least don’t lose. However, it is not changed to stop casting spells if it is killed, morphed, or sent back to your hand, making it far less likely to cast everything with no consequence.
That’s all for now. This patch is currently aiming to launch with the Last Call events and the Hearthstone Championship Tour.