Why play four minions of the same name when you can play five?
Blizzard has just confirmed that The Caverns Below will be nerfed in an upcoming balance patch. The news came via a post on the official Hearthstone forums.
In order to complete the Rogue’s Un’Goro Quest card, you will now need to play five minions with the same name in order to receive the Crystal Core reward. That’s up from four at launch.
The developers had this to say on the upcoming change:
”Since the release of Journey to Un’Goro, Hearthstone has enjoyed a wider variety of competitively viable classes and decks than ever before. We’ve been monitoring overall gameplay, and we’ve decided that – even though everything is varied and many decks are viable – a change to The Caverns Below is still warranted.”
”The Caverns Below is uniquely powerful versus several slower, control-oriented decks and played often enough that it’s pushing those decks out of play. This change should help expand the deck options available to players both now and after the release of the next expansion.”
The Caverns Below has been a source of some frustration since the launch of the latest expansion. While not unreasonably powerful in the grander scheme of competitive decks, it’s often frustrating to lose against and provides little opportunity for meaningful interaction between the two players. If you’re curious to learn more about it, our Quest Rogue deck list guide contains more insight on what it’s like to play.
It’s interesting too that Blizzard foresees the archetype becoming more problematic with the next expansion. An announcement on that front is expected in the next few weeks, with a release date due at some point in August.
The Caverns Below nerf has yet to be dated, but we’ll update this news report as soon as we learn more. In the mean time, don’t forget to vote in the poll below and let us know what you think of the upcoming change in the comments.
