- The Lava Spawn ability will be changed to “When Lava Spawn enters the battleground, decrease your [MIGHT] level by 1”. This way it will still present a drawback when played by the first player. You will be able to use your Hero ability when playing a Lava Spawn.
- The Spell Stealer Heretic will banish any spell card it plays from the graveyard, so any spell won’t be reusable more than once. Her stats will also be changed to 3 attack, 1 retaliation, 6 hp (instead of 3/1/7).
- Ice Spear resource cost will be increased to 2 (instead of 1).
- Mother Namtaru, Invoker of Death: The resource cost of this hero’s special ability will be increased to 1 (instead of 0). This cost is in addition to discarding a card.
- Blackskull Warchanter & Newborn Vampire : These two cards’ Might requirement is changed to 1 (instead of 2) to make them playable as first turn drops.
Lava Spawn
This nerf doesn't make any sense, because it will make Deleb* completly obsolete, while at same time, it will be buff for Kiril Rush**, which was imho much stronger than Deleb anyway. Also it makes Lave Spawn drawback much less important mid and late game.
*Deleb will have 1/0/1 after playing LS during 1st turn, so she won't be able to play any among most of 2nd turn drops.
**This isn't any issue for starting Kiril, he still can play most 2nd drops (with exception of Lurker in the Dark), it's also no issue for Kiril going 2nd and playing two of those beats.
Spell Stealer Heretic
Community was demanding banish to SSH ability and it has happened. It won't punch Fire & Dark heroes much (Kiril/Kal) since they have plenty targets for ability, while it may be real issue for Fire only heroes (Dhamiria/Garant) and number of SSH will be reduced in those constructions.
Also stat change is somehow weird, since she still lives thru Arkath's Wrath.
Ice Spear
Nerf to Ice Spear is one big misunderstanding. This card was really only good while played together with Namtaru Channler, but they were played only in one deck together (Namtaru Rush). Namtaru gets other major nerf in same patch.
Mother Namtaru, Invoker of Death
This one we could consider as reasonable nerf... however maybe way too much due to Ice Spear nerf.
Blackskull Warchanter & Newborn Vampire
Cleary good change making those two playable again, since change of starting rules and introduction of Dragon Crystal they were useless. I guess it may help Stronghold a bit with coming back.
Summarizing...
Imho this patch is a real failure. Made in haste due to incoming Road to
Paris finals and loud cries of players who couldn't adapt to meta, which was pretty interesting. I think it won't fix anything, sure - it will shake meta, but I don't
think it will be positive shaking.