Hallowed Depths - Patch #120
Come on down to see Patch #120! We’ve got several dozen card changes this week to kick off our new Season, complete with targeted buffs designed to support strategies that have fallen behind in the face of our new Mono-Prism driven metagame. Also, we’re excited to announce that our first two Dual Prism Hero Abilities Pack Leader and Nurturer will be releasing with our next patch, on August 17th!
Welcome to Patch 120! We’ve got a big one this week to kick off our new Season 23, complete with several targeted buffs designed to support strategies that have fallen behind in the face of our new Mono-Prism driven metagame.
Strength is receiving some boosts to its Armis Guard strategy, and a buff to a keystone card for a formerly powerful Dual-Prism deck, giving it a fighting chance in the current Mono-Prism metagame.
Agility is receiving some midrange buffs and tweaks to underperforming cards. Agility is currently the statistically strongest Prism, so we focused on buffing a few midrange tools to let Agility maintain pressure longer.
Heart is receiving buffs to a few multi-reanimation cards, helping it better recycle and revive multiple Units at once to recover from board clears and maintain tempo.
Intellect is receiving several buffs for its 1-cost focused decks. Several cards with Sunset triggers also received mechanical tweaks to align with the spell-focused themes we’ve been building upon for Intellect.
Finally, we’ve adjusted a number of Wisdom cards,, as well as Lotus’ Hero Ability to only give +2 health per five mana gained, with the intention of reducing Lotus’ overall power level.
We like the fact that Lotus is dominant in the late game but have felt players were having a bit too easy of a time reaching that state of late game dominance. Thus, we reduced the power level of some of Lotus’ ramp and stalling tools slightly to make reaching this state of late game dominance less trivial.
Finally, we’re excited to announce that our first two Dual Prism Hero Abilities will be releasing with our next patch, on August 17th! We’ll be providing more information on these Abilities over the next two weeks!
Enlightened (25004)
Text:
Every five max mana, give your hero +3 health and Draw a card.
↓
Every five max mana, give your hero +2 health and Draw a card.
Adjusting Lotus' Ability to reduce some of his incremental healing and make him a bit less durable over the course of the game.
Dracomantium (31)
Power:
4
→
6
Health:
8
→
10
Giving a +2/+2 buff to an underperforming late-game Unit.
Amaruath's Will (103)
Text:
Attach Anima to units in your hand and deck without an
attachment.
↓
Draw a unit. Attach Anima to units in your hand and deck without an
attachment.
We’re reverting a nerf to help diversify the meta by giving some power back to Dual-Prism Anima decks. This card was problematic in the past, but we feel it should have a healthier place in the new metagame.
Bulwark of Armis (123)
Power:
3
→
4
Health:
6
→
7
Spell:
Goblet of Armis
→
None
A simplification and buff to one of the main powerhouses for Armis Guard decks. We’re dropping the low-impact attachment and giving Bulwark +1/+1 to compensate.
King Altren XI (131)
Text:
Play: Summon five Armis Guard. This game, your Armis Guard have
+1/+1.
↓
Play: Summon five Armis Guard. This game, your Armis Guard have +1/+1
and Dash.
Another more sizable buff to Armis-focused decks. King Altren XI now gives all Armis Guards Dash for the rest of the game, providing the deck with a more dominant lategame plan and making it harder to contest.
Cthonos, the Sealed (155)
Text:
Play: Fill your board with Treefolk Sapling. Give other ally units
+2/+1.
↓
Play: Fill your board with Treefolk Sapling. Give other ally units +2/+2
and Guard.
Buff to a finisher. Cthonos now gives +2/+2 and Guard to all other ally units.
Vlad (1020)
Health:
2
→
4
Spell:
Enrage
→
None
Simplifying and buffing an underperformer by dropping Enrage for +2 health.
Talonous (1040)
Text:
Summon: If an enemy has Stealth, gain +1/+2 and Guard.
↓
After your hero attacks, gain +1 health.
Power:
5
→
6
Health:
4
→
3
Revised design. Talonous now gains +1 health after your Hero attacks, bringing it in line with the new design direction for Agility, and is now a 6/3.
Queen of Jacks (1049)
Traits:
wither
→
None
Power:
3
→
4
Health:
6
→
8
Buffing a midrange underperformer with +1/+2. We’d like to see decks with more midrange threats to combat control decks.
Sky Keeper (1090)
Text:
Sunrise and sunset effects don't trigger at the start or end of
turns.
↓
Sunrise and sunset effects don't trigger.
Simplifying the effect. Sky Keeper's unusual wording was conceived to allow Bewitching Brew to trigger while Sky Keeper was in play, but this wording has caused more confusion than it solved. We're simplifying it by removing the extra sentence.
Chainlasher (1102)
Text:
Summon: Attach Chains to all other units. Gain +1 power for each Chains
attached this way.
↓
Summon: Attach Chains to enemies.
Traits:
guard
→
None
Power:
1
→
6
Health:
5
→
4
Chainlasher now has higher power and attaches Chains to all enemies on summon, letting it serve as a counter to Hero Armor and removing the risk of chaining your own Units.
Forest Hart (3013)
Traits:
stealth,lifesteal
→
None
Power:
2
→
3
Health:
6
→
8
Simplifying and buffing a midrange card. We’re dropping its traits and granting a +1/+2 buff to let it be played for its raw stats.
Undergrowth (3050)
Cost:
6
→
5
Giving a -1 cost buff to a multi-summon tool for Heart.
Jar of Souls (3054)
Cost:
7
→
6
Giving a -1 cost buff to another multi-summon tool for Heart.
Gerry the Goon (3122)
Cost:
8
→
7
Text:
Summon: This game, your Zomboid have +1 power and their death effect
does 2 damage.
↓
Play: This game, your Zomboid have +1 power and their death effect does
2 damage.
Traits:
wither
→
None
Spell:
Hexfection
→
Invasion
A buff and revision to a keystone card for Zomboid decks. Giving -1 cost while dropping Wither, and changing the attached spell to the more impactful Invasion. We’ve also changed the Summon effect to a Play effect to prevent people from abusing it.
Noxdeos, the Cursed (3147)
Text:
Play: Summon your top five dead units as 1/1 with Guard.
↓
Play: Summon your top five dead units as 1/3 with Guard.
Noxdeos is getting a big buff; The Units summoned are now 1/3 rather than 1/1. We’re looking to buff finishers, and some of the titans that were underperforming are prime targets.
Hax (4052)
Text:
Death: Add Unophobia to your deck.
↓
Death: Add Unophobia to your hand.
Buff to 1 cost decks, Hax now adds Unophobia to hand, increasing consistency.
Krakus (4068)
Text:
Sunset: If you have no mana, do 2 damage to the left and right-most
enemies.
↓
Sunset: If you played a spell this turn, do 1 damage to a random enemy.
Repeat seven more times.
Power:
5
→
8
Spell:
Grasp of Kraken
→
None
Another slight redesign, now triggers off a Spell being played in the same turn, similar to starter deck cards.
Shell Officer (4086)
Text:
Sunset: If you have no mana, summon Shellguard.
↓
Sunset: If you played a spell this turn, summon Shellguard.
Health:
6
→
7
Slight redesign, now triggers off a Spell being played in the same turn, similar to starter deck cards.
Ooh! Shiny! (4112)
Text:
Conjure two 1 cost cards. At the end of this turn, dust any of those
cards left in your hand.
↓
Conjure three 1 cost cards. At the end of this turn, dust any of those
cards left in your hand.
Buff and return to an earlier version as a boon for to 1 cost decks, now adds three 1-cost cards to hand.
Big Friend (4116)
Cost:
12
→
11
Traits:
None
→
guard
Buff to 1-cost focused Intellect decks by giving it -1 cost and Guard.
Seer's Mask (2002)
Text:
Gain 1 mana. Mulligan your hand.
↓
Mulligan your hand.
Seer’s Mask has historically been an issue due to cheating mana, so we’ve reduced it to merely a mulligan tool. This is likely to leave it weak but should help resolve some of Wisdom’s curve-breaking problems, and the card can be buffed in the future or retooled as needed.
Invest (2009)
Text:
Spend your mana to give target ally that much health. If it has
99 health, swap its power and health.
↓
Spend your mana to give target ally unit that much health and
Guard.
Revising a major source of healing by making it a Unit-focused buff instead, allowing it to give an ally Unit guard, encouraging more aggressive and board-focused use of the card, and removing its alternate win condition, as it was frustrating and typically only came into play when something else unbalanced enabled it.
Seal of Doom (2036)
Cost:
4
→
5
Text:
Lose 1 Max Mana. Do 3 damage to your hero. Give all units -6/-6.
↓
Do 4 damage to your hero and all units.
Nerf to a problematic removal spell. No longer drains your max mana on use, but simply deals 4 damage to Units and your hero, making it a more standardized removal option.
Doomsday (2084)
Text:
Do 2 damage to enemies for every 5 Max Mana you have.
↓
Do 2 damage to enemies, +1 damage for every 5 Max Mana you have.
Doomsday has proved too powerful, so we’re reducing its power level. Doomsday now only does +1 damage for every 5 Max Mana you have, instead of +2, but maintains a base damage of two, keeping its damage around the same as before. This specific change is intended so that mid-range Units with 5-6 health can withstand Doomsday.
Gigabloom (2115)
Text:
Gain 2 Max Mana. Give your hero +2 health.
↓
Gain 2 Max Mana.
Removed incidental healing to reduce Wisdom’s overall healing.
Infinite Infinities (2134)
Text:
Draw a card. Gain a Max Mana for every 5 Max Mana you have. Return this
spell to deck at the end of this turn.
↓
Gain a Max Mana. Repeat for each other time you have cast Infinite
Infinities this game. Return this to deck at end of turn.
Another revision to Infinities. It now lacks card draw and also scales based on how many times it has been cast, rather than based on Max Mana, which should help limit how quickly it scales and also make it riskier to use, since you’ll keep drawing it, rather than new cards, if you keep returning it to deck.
Nihilos, the Hollow (2138)
Text:
Play: Give enemies -1 health, give your hero +2 health, and Draw a
card. Repeat for every 5 Max Mana you have.
↓
Play: Give enemies -1 health, give your hero +1 health, and Draw a
card. Repeat for every 5 Max Mana you have.
Reducing healing by dropping the scaling of Nihilos’ heal effect to 1 health per 5 max Mana, reducing another source of scalable healing for Wisdom.
Earth Scion (2141)
Text:
Play: Give target ally +2 health. Gain 1 Max Mana.
↓
Play: Gain 1 Max Mana.
Removed the small health-boosting effect to reduce Wisdom’s overall healing.
Gift of Sky (2154)
Text:
Gain 1 Max Mana. Draw a Wisp unit.
↓
Draw three Wisp and/or Scion units.
Revising an additional piece of ramp to be an archetypal draw spell, digging up three wisps and/or scions to emphasize their role better.
Surging Power (2159)
Text:
Give target ally +3 health, +2 health for every 5 Max Mana you
have.
↓
Give target ally +3 health, +1 health for every 5 Max Mana you
have.
Nerf to an over-tuned source of healing. It now only heals +1 health per 5 Max Mana.