Just yesterday, Blizzard announced some Hearthstone balance changes that aim to take Rogue and Control Warrior down a peg, which should do wonders for the standard meta. Now, in an unprecedented move, it'll be permanently buffing two cards per class for a total of 18 cards, plus retroactively adding a Legendary minion to an expansion, with an event called Rise of the Mech, which runs from June 3 to July 1. Few cards have ever received direct buffs like this in Hearthstone history, so this represents quite the shift in design philosophy.
As you might imagine from the name, Rise of the Mech is all about your robotic minions, which are getting tooled up by that fiendish goblin inventor Dr. Boom. All the cards getting adjustments are from The Boomsday Project set which launched on August 7, 2018, so there's been ample time to track their performance - or in these cases, how underpowered most of them turned out to be.
"Our hope is that some of these updated cards will show up consistently until the next set rotation, while others inspire completely new decks without having a lasting negative impact on their respective classes," reads a statement from the design team. "If the goal of a balance update is to address metagame outliers, the goal of the Rise of the Mech update is to inspire some new fun ideas." Here's a full list of the changes in question, which range from mana cost reductions to slightly improved minion stats.
Druid
Gloop Sprayer to 7 Mana. (Down from 8)
Mulchmuncher to 9 Mana. (Down from 10)
Hunter
Necromechanic to 4 Mana. (Down from 5)
Flark's Boom-Zooka to 7 Mana. (Down from 8)
Mage
Unexpected Results to 3 Mana. (Down from 4)
Luna’s Pocket Galaxy to 5 Mana. (Down from 7)
Paladin
Crystology to 1 Mana. (Down from 2)
Glowstone Technician to 5 Mana. (Down from 6)
Priest
Extra Arms to 2 Mana. (Down from 3)
Cloning Device to 1 Mana. (Down from 2)
Rogue
Pogo-Hopper to 1 Mana. (Down from 2)
Violet Haze to 2 Mana. (Down from 3)
Shaman
The Storm Bringer to 6 Mana. (Down from 7)
Thunderhead to 3/6 (Up from 3/5)
Warlock
Spirit Bomb to 1 Mana. (Down from 2)
Dr. Morrigan to 6 Mana. (Down from 8)
Warrior
Security Rover to 2/6 stats. (Up from 2/5)
Beryllium Nullifier to 4/8 stats. (Up from 3/8)
All of these buffs seem reasonable at a glance, making a few cards slightly more appealing without clearly breaking any existing archetypes or making a card an instant-include for all decks. I'm most curious to see how the changes to Luna's Pocket Galaxy and Pogo-Hopper could inspire new decklists, and it'd be hilarious to see a junk Legendary like Dr. Morrigan suddenly become viable.
In addition to these changes, Blizzard is making another unprecedented move by adding a Legendary minion to The Boomsday Project set after the fact. SN1P-SN4P, a perfectly named robotic crab, is the first ever mech with both the Magnetic and Echo keywords, which can easily pump up a friendly mech minion to powerful proportions. If you log in during the duration of the Rise of the Mech event, you'll snag a golden copy of this Legendary neutral minion, which is still a fantastic dust gift even if you're not keen on mech decks.
Interestingly, Blizzard says that "SN1P-SN4P will be considered part of the The Boomsday Project and will rotate with that set, however SN1P-SN4P will NOT drop from The Boomsday Project card packs. Golden SN1P-SN4P will only be obtainable as part of the Rise of the Mech event, and the normal SN1P-SN4P can only be crafted for dust."
To showcase these card changes in action, Blizzard will be hosting a "Mech-vitational" event on June 3 - 4, which will surely lead to some highly clippable livestream hijinks. A new Arena season will also kick off when Rise of the Mech goes live on June 3, including the usual Classic and Basic card pool plus cards from the Goblins vs. Gnomes, Grand Tournament, Karazhan, Boomsday Project, and Rise of Shadows expansions.
If you're just getting started in Blizzard's ever-changing card game, here are the best Hearthstone decks for beginners. Or see what's happening this week in games and entertainment with our latest Release Radar:
