Hearthstone adds new Battlegrounds heroes and minions and a Standard nerf.

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Hearthstone adds new Battlegrounds heroes and minions and a Standard nerf.

All the cards for Hearthstone's newest miniset, The Wailing Caverns, have been released and will go live tomorrow as part of the 20.4 patch. And honestly, who wouldn't be excited to own a card called "Kresh, Lord of the Tortoise"?

This mini-set is not all that will be added in this massive new update. The patch notes released today also include new heroes and minions for Battlegrounds, as well as nerfs, including a new bonk to Paladin's "First Day at School."

The First Day of School nerf actually undoes some of the changes made a few weeks ago in the 20.2.2 patch, which changed the card from 0 cost to 1 cost and increased the number of random 1-cost minions added to the hand from two to three. Another paladin card, "Hand of Addal," was also cut, and instead of granting +2/+2 minions, it now grants +2/+1.

"The first day of school and A'dal's Hand are powerful performers played by all four major Paladin archetypes (Libram, Aggro, Secret, and Menagerie) and will be nerfed in 20.4 to help the other classes close the gap with the Paladin ", Blizzard explained." Another note on "First School": the previous balance change to this card was only a mild change in power, but we will continue to attempt such changes in the future. Our current balance philosophy is to proceed with the lightest changes possible, as we did when we first repositioned "First School", and we have seen excellent results over the past year with this approach."

"Unbounded Spirit" also has a card text cleanup: instead of getting +1/+1 every time you play a card with Overload, it now gets +1/+1 after you play the card.

Even more exciting, two new Battleground Heroes are coming:

Mutanus the Devourer

Guff Runetotem

and a new minion:

Hexruin Marauder

As often happens, Maiev Shadowsong will also be temporarily removed from the Battlegrounds hero pool in this patch.

The arena will also be rotated after the patch and will include the following cards. Card backs will be available for 500 or 600 gold and hero skins for 1200 or 1800 gold. More card backs and hero skins are expected in future patches: according to Blizzard, new cards will continue to appear in the store and "we will continue to regularly update our collection and add more card backs and hero skins."

Coming to the party are:

(Hero skins marked with * will also include the associated card backs)

A new chapter in the solo adventure Book of Mercenaries will also appear during June; on June 15, Book of Mercenaries Guff will follow and will conclude on June 22 with Book of Heroes Malfurion. Each of the eight bosses will be defeated to obtain a card pack of a Priest (Xyrella) and two Druids (Guff and Malfurion).

And as always, there are 25 bug fixes and gameplay improvements. Let's make them count:

The full Hearthstone 20.4 patch notes can be found at blizzard.com. The update will be released on June 3.

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