The latest patch notes are out, so let's do a quick review:
https://blog.godsunchained.com/2022/06/22/june-patch-notes/

Bug Fixes

Hooray! Now when I'm playing all my cheap/crappy gold cards my opponent will know that I'm trying to build a farming deck and not just terrible at deck building. Fixing the Mythic pop up and no longer lying about going second are also very nice.

Buffs

Reduce cost from 9 to 8.
Balance team note – Cadence of the Infinite Sand was underperforming since release and the 9 mana slot has already a lot of competitive options. With the current change, the team expects to rise up the win-ratio of the card, increasing also the pool of 8 mana playable cards for control decks.

A needed buff. Should the card price have tripled? Probably not. Ability cards are slow. An 8 mana ability card is borderline unplayable no matter what the effect is. Imagine passing your turn at 8 mana (this card does nothing on the turn it's played). You have to already be winning. In short, this is a bandaid. It helps, but I don't think the card is going to see top 10 (or even 100) play.

Change stats from 2/5 to 3/5
Balance team note – With the implementation of Balance Patch #5 the team has pushed some tool cards to deal with some of our combo decks in-game, giving the players the chance to hard counter/temporary slow down the combo process. Following down this road, we decided to increase the stats of Odessa, Knight Arbiter to have it as a possible playable option to interact with those archetypes.

A good change, but the balance team is missing the problem: combo decks are too consistent and tech cards are not the answer. That's a longer discussion, but this change does help make this card more viable. Solid in a mid range deck where you are likely only playing 1 card per turn to drop a big creature. Meanwhile, aggro and control are wanting to play multiple creatures or spells and get shut down.

Change text from “Roar: Your opponent summons a random creature from their hand, then this creature attacks it.“
To “Frontline. Roar: Your opponent summons a random creature from their hand, then this creature attacks it.”
Balance team note – Like Odessa, this is another important answer to combo decks. With the addition of Frontline, we expect the card to be more relevant in aggro match-ups, making it a valid option for the 5 mana slot.

Another attempt to make anti-combo cards viable, but (in my opinion) this is just a complete miss. Frontline wasn't what this creature was missing. If you are going to draw a creature from your opponent (that costs them 0 mana), you had better kill it. 3 strength doesn't do that unless the creature is 1-2 mana usually. Furthermore, you still run the risk of plopping down a Poly and instantly losing the game.

This is still a bad card. Looking at the price action of the card on tokentrove makes me wish we could short cards somehow. People just see the card name under "Buff" and buy up 30 copies.

Increase health from 4 to 5.
Reduce strength from 4 to 3.
Change text from “Ability: Target a character. If it is an enemy, attack it. If it is friendly heal it for 3 health.”
To “Ability: Target a character. If it is an enemy, attack it. If it is friendly, heal it for 4.”
Balance team note – Flame-Touched Paladin has a very unique design. Most of the problems on the balance side according to the team analysis, come from the 4 health range removals. Moving the stats to 3/5 we expect the survivability of the card to rise, and upgrading the heal to 4 can help stabilize it making it a considerable option during the deckbuilding process.

I love the idea of this card and tried to make some decks with it. Being able to bypass frontline to go face while having the option to heal is a cool concept. I think they identified the problem with this card correctly: it just couldn't survive. I'm happy to go from 4/4 to 3/5. It can heal itself for 4 (or any other character).

Nerfs

Change stats from 2/2 to 2/1
[AG] -Balance Intent
Balance team notes – Thestor, Grieving General is a very powerful card especially in the aggro mirrors in the early game. We definitely want to make it playable and be less dominant in those matchups. With one less health, the players will have to build the best scenario to play Thestor instead of playing it as a tempo card.

A good change, and for the right reasons. Well done on this one balance team. The card is not destroyed and with planning can still be excellent. It isn't just mindlessly OP now.

Increase mana cost from 0 to 1
Balance team notes – Pack Stalk was an unhealthy card on the balance side, the win ratio of the single card was fine, but we want to reduce the potential for lucky mulligans to win within a couple turns.

Poor pack stalk. I feel like a few of us on this board were the only ones who saw the power, but apparently devs did, too. This basically just reverts it back to what it was when it never saw play. It barely saw play at 0, so it's back to not existing status.

Change stats from 1/2 to 1/1.
Balance Team notes – To address the Deception strength and the snowball process against any aggro deck, we’ve taken this card down a notch.

Absolutely needed change. A few changes in the patch will hopefully bring deception back down to earth.

Change text from “Delve a 4 mana creature, summon it, and deal 1 damage to each enemy creature.”
To ”Delve a 4 mana creature, summon it, and deal 1 damage to each creature.”
Balance team notes – Unannounced Arrival has been on our watchlist for the longest time. This single card win ratio was slightly over the line, and the nerf of Academy Apprentice only partially reduced the power level of this board clear. So, we decided to act, making Announced Arrival damage every creature instead of only enemy ones. This ultimately makes the combo with AA less appealing and reduces the value of some good rolls from the Delve ability (yeah I’m looking at you, Highborn Knight, no more protected!)

The card definitely needed a nerf. Was this the right one? I'm not 100% sure, but I think so. It at least means you won't see this card anymore in aggro/tempo magic decks that actually play creatures. Importantly, it will wipe the weak 1/1 echo spell boost Apprentices.

Change text from “Hidden for 1 turn.
Roar: Give +3 strength to another friendly Guild creature.”
to ”Hidden for 1 turn.
Roar: Give +2 strength to another friendly Guild creature.”
Balance team notes – The interaction with Switch Duelist is very strong nowadays and the comparison with Dark Knives was clearly in favour of the Selfless Guildmate inside the full-guild tribe deception deck. For both reasons, Selfless Guildmate will give +2 strengh from now on.

Yep. It was just a better Dark Knives. The guild restriction was meaningless in the dominant decks these days (that ran 99% guild creatures).

Changes

Change mana from 2 to 1
Change stats from 2/3 to 1/3
Balance team notes – This is part of the ‘give War a chance’ bit of this patch – War needed some quality 1 drops to enable aggro war/enrage builds so this is hopefully going to help there.

A good change. Not enough in itself to make the enrage decks work, but decent.

Play it turn 1.
Enrage it turn 2 and attack with a 3/2 creature. Not bad for 2 mana.

Axewomen, boars, and other blitz creatures will mess that up, though.

Change stats from 0/1 to 1/1
Change text from “Echo. Roar: This creature steals 1 strength from the strongest enemy creature.”
To “Echo. After you summon a creature from another domain, this creature gains deadly for 1 turn.”
Balance team notes – we’ve identified that this duo is causing problems in the meta, but tuning it down wasn’t an option – so we’ve chosen to redesign it slightly to shift things a little.

RIP. Might as well be in the nerf column. No one has been able to make the 'other domain' deception deck work at a high level, so this card is basically dead. They basically admit in their notes that they couldn't find any good options, and apparently they were right.

Change text from ‘At the end of your turn, give protected to a random other Atlantean’.
To ‘At the end of your turn, give protected to a random other Atlantean without protected’
Balance team note – Bless our Undertow Rover, he tries his best – but sometimes he was protecting creatures that were already protected. We’ve altered it slightly so he can do his job a little better.

Really happy to see this. This is a neutral card that is going to be solid in any Atlantean tribal deck. Would love to see it at 1/4 (since it can't protect itself), but it's important that it not waste protects on already-protected creatures.

Conclusion

All in all another balance patch leading us in the right direction. I do have a few more complaints than usual, but this moves us towards a better meta, and I'll take it.