The end of days has come! The Hearthstone developers have not only broken their solemn vow of never, ever balancing their own game, but they have also done so in what I can only describe as a perfectly reasonable and balanced manner! I am expecting the gates of hell to open any day now as the world has quite clearly gone mad!

While my cataclysmic predictions might be a slight exaggeration, the rest of it is completely true. Blizzard has finally decided to actively balance Hearthstone in order to provide a more fun and competitive environment for all, and if this upcoming patch is any judge they are definitely moving in the right direction. If you don't believe me, have a look at all of the changes yourself:

Rockbitter Weapon - Mana cost increased to 2

Tuskarr Totemic - Only summons random basic totems now

Call of the Wild - Mana cost increased to 9

Execute - Mana cost increased to 2

Charge - Completely reworked, now reads: Give a frienly minion Charge. It can't attack heroes this turn.

Abusive Sergeant - Attack lowered to 1

Yogg-Saron - Spells with overload will now affect the casting player; If Yogg-Saron ends up killing, silencing, or otherwise removing himself from the board the random spells will stop firing

After watching the Hearthstone team completely butcher every single card they've ever nerfed I must admit I was instantly terrified of this update, but much to my relief these are some rather reasonable changes. The stupidly aggressive Shaman decks have been slightly nerfed, Yogg-Saron no longer has the ability to win you games out of nowhere, and best of all, Abusive Sargent and Execute are being changed even though the majority of the playerbase didn't really realize how broken those cards truly were. Its pretty much all I could've ever asked for from a balance patch!

For the first time in well over a year I am genuinely impressed with the Hearthstone team, so here's to hoping they continue putting out these sort of balance changes every couple of months. Its just what Hearthstone needs in order to keep it from becoming too stale.