Patch 0.12.9

Today's patch is going to bring with it some big shakeups! New cards are being released for the Human Faction Update (which you can see here), and also we're doing balance updates, detailed below.

Shop Updates

We are introducing a new weekly deal to the shop! Visit Chive's shop to secure the addition of unique cards to your collection. In the future we will probably switch what is available each week (cards, cosmetics, etc), so make sure you don't miss out each week!

Balance Changes

As part of this patch's major balance changes, we're introducing a policy that for first 7 days after a card gets powered down for balancing reasons, that card will be able to be refunded for its full dust value from your collection. Note that this policy does not apply to cards that are changed due to bug fixes, even if that makes the card stronger or weaker as a result.

In the last two weeks since the last balance pass, we've seen a rise in "combo" decks built around either The End, or Jappi / Repeat Visit, and we're aiming to take these decks down to more reasonable levels. While we want some fun combos to be possible, we think it's healthiest when these decks exist as spice to a normal meta of aggro/midrange/control decks, rather than the main way to win.

Also with today's balance changes, we want to bring up certain underperforming cards and improve faction internal balance.

• Echoes of History now only gives cards Echo for one turn, rather than indefinitely.

  Echoes of History is a hugely powerful effect with the right setup, and we'd rather it be used strategically to setup a big turn, rather than simply for value. We think that Echoes of History will still be a powerful card that'll see home in many decks despite the nerf.

• Repeat Visit's card draw is now capped at 4.

  It turns out that infinitely scaling card draw leads to some degenerate things, who could have known? Repeat Visit has been at the heart of a lot of new combo decks that aim to draw their whole deck quickly, and a lot of Increasing Desperations on top of that, to deal truly absurd levels of damage. Additionally, Repeat Visit's ability can lead to situations where a player draws so many cards that the game engine and client break down. If you manage to draw 4 cards for 1 resource, then that's enough of a payoff.

• Jappi Quickfingers now caps at replaying 8 cards.

• Jappi Quickfingers is now a 6 cost, up from 5.

  The change to Tell and Jappi's interaction in a previous patch (which we intend to keep) has lead to some imaginative and crazy combo decks. Jappi turns can take a very long time to resolve, so we want to put an upper cap on just how much she can replay, as well as a player's ability to cast 2 in one turn so easily. If you manage to cast Jappi and do a 8-for-1, you're probably winning anyway. Reminder: if you click on Jappi, you can see all the cards she'll replay.

• The End has a new effect: "Foretold. Double all damage you deal for the rest of the match."

  The End was leading to play patterns that were very undesirable. Casting The End often felt like it invalidated the game that led up to that point, and decks could be built around guaranteeing victory in Sudden Death. We explored a few other balancing options, such as increasing the cost to 11 or moving the card to 2 devotion, but ultimately felt that there's simply no healthy space for the card's previous ability: at 11 cost it's probably a dead epic, and at 2 devotion it's only a matter of time for new cards to break it again. Instead, we're changing the card's effect to something that else entirely that still captures the feeling of "The end is here".

• The Hushed Blade is now a 6/7, up from a 4/7.

  Poor Hushed Blade. The Hushed Blade sits as the least popular Starter champion by a mile. While the other Starter champions all occupy the 1st to 6th slots as the most played champions, The Hushed Blade sits at 12th place. That’s no good for the legendary witch hunter, so we’re increasing his stats to be more exciting.

• Black Knight now only gains +1 Power when the enemy board is empty, rather than +1/+1.

  Black Knight is intended to come down early and punish decks that that don’t commit to the board, and to pay off control decks for clearing the board by helping to end the game. While many have suggested simply increasing Black Knight to be a 4 drop rather than 3, we actually do want control players to be playing down the card turn 1 and immediately getting onto the board. However, when Black Knight’s health increases every turn on top of regenerating its Barrier, the card gets a double dose of increased durability, and it makes the intended counterplay to Black Knight a lot less effective than it should be.

• Ancient Grenn is now a 3/6, down from a 3/7.

  Ancient Grenn has proven to be by far the best of the “unlimited starter cards”, simply by being such an efficient ball of stats. Ancient Grenn’s ability to often 3 for 1 small faeries and gremlins is especially strong, especially when so much of an Arbura deck is comprised of them. Unless an “unlimited card” has an interesting build-around aspect, like Skulker, we don’t want them to be this dominant, as it leads to less interesting decks and gameplay in the long run.

• Barbed Avenger is now a 2/2, up from a 0/1.

  It has a new text box

  "Flying.

  Play

  I gain 1 power for each ability card you've played this match. After I attack, I lose this power."

  While not currently the hot button issue that some of the above cards are, Barbed Avenger has been quietly ending games out of nowhere and racking up quite the winrate. Barbed Avenger's old design circumvents the counterplay-heavy style of Wyldernook, which is ultimately unhealthy for the game. We're reworking him now, before he becomes a problem, so that the finishing blow is more telegraphed and needs some protection backup. As a bonus, the new design is a bit more flavorful of how wasps lose their stingers (or is that just bees...?) Of course, with effects like Turned Around or Compel, you could still pull off a one-turn-kill, but we're much more comfortable with needing an extra card to pull off the OTK.

• Shieldwood Colossus now has Regeneration.

  The evolved meta has quickly shown that a vanilla, expensive ally like Shieldwood Colossus is completely non-viable.

• Join Nature now costs 5, down from 6.

  At 6 cost, Join Nature wasn’t really a competitive choice. Ultimately, it’s a removal ability with negligible (though fun) upside. Compared to something like Love Potion that just costs 1 more, it looked pretty bad, and its winrate reflected that.

• Frightening Froid is now a 3/2 for 2 resources, down from a 4/2 for 3 resources.

  While technically this may be more of a side-grade, the reality of playing Gremlins is they often want this effect to sneak through some damage, but paying 3 for it was too tempo-negative.

• Blood Monstrosity is now a 5/6, up from a 4/6.

  While Coven eventually is intended to have more "deal damage to self" payoffs, right now Blood Monstrosity is nowhere to be seen, despite being in the most played faction.

• Arcane Devourer now costs 2 devotion, up from 1.

  As a rule, we'd like strong board wipes to always be 2 devotion, and Arcane Devourer not being so was an oversight on our part. Allowing powerful board wipes to exist at a single devotion means that decks can start to really overload on board wipes, creating the dreaded "board wipe tribal" decks.

• Boundless-of-Strength now costs 2, down from 3.

  At 3 cost, Boundless-of-Strength was always a below-rate vanilla ally, and is one of the lowest game-in-hand winrate cards in the game. Simply put, it was never a good time to play this guy. Now at least he'll be an on-rate vanilla ally.

• Heroic Rescue's Savior no longer blocks any number of enemies.

  Heroic Rescue is a brutal card to play against as an aggressive deck, single-handedly wiping many attack zones, while healing too. In an effort to make aggro decks more viable, we're taking it down a notch.

• Blackmark's Thorn is now a 1 devotion cost, down from 2.

• Blackmark's Thorn now has 2 health, up from 1.

  Blackmark's Thorn is an interesting design, but has proven to be underperforming in both win-rate and playabilty. We're increasing the number of decks she's playable in, as well as increasing her health so she's more likely to play the way she's intended to, manipulating and predicting blocking order to get a kill, rather than just dying to random single damage effects.

• Armored Pineapple now costs 6, down from 7.

  Armored Pineapple isn't as impervious as he thinks he is. We think this card can be interesting as a late-game win condition for aggro decks or a Gremlin-based control deck, but at 7 he's a little too tempo-negative.

• Black Cat can no longer discard a player's Champion.

  Killing a Black Cat and having your Champion be the card discarded is a little too much bad luck. Black Cat's effect is being brought back in line with other discard effects like Cling to the Past.

Other Changes

• Update Collector Booster packs so that alternative frame Starter cards are considered to be part of the "Common" slot, rather than the "Rare" slot.

  Previously, Starter cards were considered to be "Rares" if given an alternative frame treatment, but we've realized this is a mistake. Players already have these cards, and players opening booster packs are hoping to get new cards.

• Sacrifice rules have been better implemented. You can now sacrifice Invulnerable characters (and they'll die). Sacrifice has been given a tooltip clarifying how it works differently than simply killing a character.

• The Collection Page now does a better job of organizing piles. Previously it was possible to have duplicate piles of cards

• Jappi Quickfingers now resolves her cards in the order in which they were originally played.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where casting two Swap Fates on the same targets in the reverse order would cause an infinite loop and break the game server.

• Chosen for Sacrifice no longer advances rituals if the death was prevented (for example, via Barrier).

• Untargetable now has a tooltip.

• Salad Squire now moves to the front of the Attack Zone even the turn he is played.

• Fixed many cases of Rafaella Blackmark breaking the game server.

• The Card Highlighter info panel can now scroll if it gets too large.

• If Adaptive Warrior is given Charge but played into a full zone, he'll now properly go back to hand, rather than getting erased.

• Tell, Humanity's Child now reveals the Champion of the deck they grab.

• Updated Blood Familiar and Blood Monstrosity text boxes to clarify that they deal damage, not life loss, which is relevant for cards like The End's new effect.