prolix
3163
“This spring”! There will be a new expansion as well.
Squee
3164
I’m pretty pumped about a standard format. Assuming the new set of cards doesn’t include “Nerubian egg cluster” and “Dr Explosion” and “Manned Shredder” and “Ramshackle Portal” I’ll be happy as a pig in shit. Nax and GVG kinda fucked the game up with the massively powerful deathrattles and RNG cards, hopefully taking them out of the picture will make sweepers more widely powerful. Control decks will lose some toys too, in sludge belcher and healbot (And some class specifics. Losing lightbomb hurts, as does death’s bite) but overall I think it’ll be a lot more enjoyable to play without Nax and GVG cards.
It also hurts a lot of current decks, which is nice. Secret paladin loses minibot, muster, coghammer and avenge for example. Combo druid keeps most of his major cards, but losing some sticky minions like shredders and belchers will make for less of a “You left me with a single minion on board, hmm well played” playstyle. This also slightly increases the value of owning “Classic” set cards, since basic and classic set will apparently remain in the standard format. New expansions and sets will eventually be phased out, but Tirion is forever.
Man, this is the most excited I’ve been about Hearthstone in ages. Mildly disappointed you won’t get full dust value (At least they haven’t mentioned it) on non-standard cards, but oh well.
So, it doesn’t actually say what the first rotation will be…I assume Classic and Grand Tournament is where I want to concentrate my grinding of cards to maximize my future Standard decks?
EDIT: Ooops, found it:
Basic
Classic
Blackrock Mountain
The Grand Tournament
The League of Explorers
The Spring 2016 Expansion
prolix
3166
Basically this means we are going to see a resurgence of dragon decks.
Removing old adventures from sale is pretty shitty. I mean, I object to pretty much every aspect of how Blizzard’s been handling singleplayer content in Hearthstone, but that’s pretty much the capstone right there.
Mr.GRIM
3168
Removing the old adventures does seem like an incredible waste. Perhaps a single player “Legacy Bundle” every few years is in the future. It just needs to have it’s cost adjusted.
prolix
3169
Maybe they will also take this opportunity to fix the AI. I never cease to be amazed by things like casting Shadow Word: Pain on your own Northshire Cleric.
tryte
3170
Where does it say they’re removing adventures? Since you can still play everything in “Wild” mode, why would they do that.
DeepT
3171
Won’t the basic set always be part of this new mode? If so I should focus on building that up. I am a super-casual player and I have very few legendaries (it seems when I open one in a pack its something terrible like captain greenskin or the guy why makes turns take 15 seconds).
I thought it would have been better if they created a system where you would only play against people with the same sets represented in your deck. IE: If you have only basic cards you will be matched up against someone who is also only running a deck with basic cards.
Crispus
3172
Until most of the dragons disappear next year, at least. BRM, TGT, and LOE would all be dropped next spring, going by what they said. That means we’ll only have had LOE for 14 months or so.
I don’t think the full basic set will be, no. The announcement says “along with a core foundation of the Basic and Classic card sets (which will always be valid for Standard).” I guess that could be read as “all of the basic and classic sets”, but I was reading it as “some of them, but probably not things that will make balancing harder going forward”
“Only”?
14 months is a long time in Hearthstone. Is anybody saying “Oh man I can’t believe GvG is already going away”? That set is on roughly the same rotation as LoE will be, and feels like it came out ages ago. Is there a Hearthstone player alive who is going to lament the passing of Dr. Boom?
Hearthstone cheat tools contain malware (via Slashdot). Bot tools causing system security holes? I’m shocked.
I do use the Hearthstone Deck Tracker, which appears to be OK, as long as you get the real version and not some random person’s spiked version. I mostly like it for the arena run tracking functions.
Unlock Paladin Lady Liadrin by leveling a WoW character to 20 after March 11th. This can be done without a WoW subscription, since you can level up to 20 for free.
Holy crap, I just played an arena game where my opponent played double Ysera on back to back turns. I was in an absolutely dominant position until around turn 7 when he put down a Deathlord and gave it Divine Spirit to make a 16 health taunt and then twin Yseras shortly thereafter.
Had an incredible Paladin deck and was playing so well, I’m bummed to only get 6 wins with it. Damn arena can be harsh.
I just ran across a blog post on the Hearthstone site about updated search functionality. It’s a couple of weeks old, but I didn’t see it until now. They’ve added a bunch of search features, like “mana:5-” for everything costing 5 or less, or “attack:3” for everything with exactly 3 attack. Useful for deck building - not that I do much of that, but it’s nice to have more tools when I do.
The iOS update that dropped this morning includes a new hero for purchase until April 24: Khadgar (Mage). Unlike the original three heroes, he’s only $4.99, and 100% of the proceeds go to the World Wildlife Fund. He’s available for purchase only in the iOS version, but playable in all. However, if you update the mobile version, you may be unable to log into the PC game client until the patching process is completed by 12:30 PM PDT.
EDIT: New hero available in iOS version only.
Slight correction - according to the patch notes, it’s not “mobile versions”, it’s “iOS devices”. So if you’re an Android user, no Mage for you.
Edit: Turns out this is because the whole thing is part of the Apps For Earth campaign put on by Apple and the World Wildlife Fund. Can’t say I think much of the platform locking. But I will say it’s nice to see gaming and charity getting together, can always use more of that.
