A new Hearthstone patch has arrived, nerfing Quest Rogues

A new Hearthstone patch has rolled out, and it’s delivered the Quest Rogue nerf that so many of the community were calling for.

The nerf, which was revealed two weeks ago but has only now arrived on the main servers, centers on the Rogue’s class quest card: The Caverns Below. The Caverns Below requires a Rogue to play a minion with the same name four times, and as you can only have two of the same card it often requires some control, and the use of a Rogue’s abilities to ‘bounce’ a minion from the board back to the hand to work.

However, this was much too easy, and the reward, a Crystal Core that could make all Crystal Minions 5/5 was stronger than anticipated, meaning ranked play was dominated with Quest Rogue decks, and aggressive rush down decks designed to counter it. 

The reason it got nerfed so quickly was that it simple wasn’t a lot of fun to play against. If this was activated in the opening few turns, with several strategies having the quest completed by turn 4 or 5, it was nearly unbeatable. This isn’t a lot of fun for the guy getting stomped, and it’s barely rewarding for the Rogue player, either.

Still, it’s an incredibly powerful deck, and while this will shake its earlier dominance, there’s a good chance it’ll receive further tweaks from Blizzard in a future patch.

There are a few other changes, too. The Arena drop rates have been tweaked significantly, but the biggest unannounced changed is to the cards Jade Spirit, Djinni of Zephyrs, Flame of Azzinoth, Mana Geode and Hallazeal, The Ascended being given the Elemental Tribal Tag, which opens up new possibilities for deck synergy. Check out the patch notes, if you’re into it.