7/29 Balance Changes
This live balance announcement is sooner than the originally planned middle of August patch; but when such a clear need for change arises as is the case with Rakano in Expedition (a strategy players have tuned to impressively high levels of performance, to the point of being extremely format-warping), our priority is to take action and address player concerns as quickly as we can. These changes will be going into effect tomorrow, July 29th. With the upcoming Expedition Challenge event this weekend, we carefully evaluated what select changes could best improve the format while not overly disrupting player’s preparations.
Nerfs
- Telut, The Iron Gate – Now “Surge: Your relic weapon gets +1/+1. Each enemy unit gets -1 strength this turn.” (was “Surge: Each enemy unit gets -1 strength and your relic weapon gets +1/+1.)
Telut’s ability permanently weakening enemy units was completely decimating entire strategies, frequently the turn he was played, having such a powerful impact, even removing him was too little too late. Now seeing widespread play beyond decks with relic weapons like Rakano Surge, Telut’s Surge ability has proven to be a major constraint on players looking to attack in the format. By adjusting Telut’s ability to work just for the turn, Telut should remain an enticing card to help your relic weapons or attackers, but open up more room for interaction making a bigger difference, as well as speeding up the pace of games.
- Ijin, Walking Armory – Now “The first time you play another unit each turn, play a +4/+4 weapon on it.” (was “The first time you play a unit each turn, play a +4/+4 weapon on it.”)
Ijin’s become more selfless and will now only play weapons on your other units. By playing a weapon immediately on herself when played if you had six Justice influence, she was asking too little of players for how much material she was bringing to the table. By needing to combine her with another unit, Ijin should less reliably be able to give immediate value without a lot of setup work, opening a larger window for possible counterplay before she’s able to.
We’ll be continuing to monitor the Expedition format as well as Throne and Draft following these changes to see if any further action is merited during our planned balance patch for the middle of August.