For the past few weeks, a deck called "Ramp Paladin" (or, to put it unkindly, "Cheese Paladin") has been reigning atop the meta in Hearthstone's Standard format. Its aim is to use "Timeless Nosdrum" to get both players to 10 mana and hit you with one of its big 10-drops, but it can also overrun you with "Corrupt Clown" or "Merlock" before that. Patch 19.6 stalls the "Ramp Paladin" with a seemingly minor change that increases the cost of "Alura, Abbot" by one point, from four to five.

With Alura in the deck, Ramp Paladin can use her spellburst ability to cast "Tilt the Balance," which summons seven merlocks from the deck. The deck's high win rate depends on drawing her by turn 4 and filling the board before the rest of the deck is ready. As the patch notes explain, "When individual cards like Alura's can significantly affect a deck's win rate, the promise of Hearthstone matches is broken. Instead of a natural back-and-forth flow between players, a game with turn 4 Alura can create seemingly insurmountable board conditions early in the game"

, it explains.

In addition to the Alura nerf, patch 19.6 includes a variety of changes regarding battlegrounds. Here is one of them: "Instead of checking for triples after each minion is summoned, all minions are now summoned first before triples occur. Captain Hooktusk has been temporarily removed from the hero pool and Elistra the Immortal has been removed from the minions pool. Balance adjustments have been applied to cards such as Yo-Ho-Ogre, Champion of Y'Shaarj, and Waxrider Togwaggle. See patch notes for details.

There is also mention of Quilboar as the next minion type, and Blizzard will share more details on that in April.

Finally, the next chapter of the Book of Heroes will be released on March 2 and will tell the story of Valira becoming a master assassin.

Here are some of the many major announcements about Blizzard's games that were made at BlizzCon 2021.