Hearthstone Dev Tracker

Patch 29.6 is here, including the returns of Genn and Baku in Standard, and Buddies in Battlegrounds, plus your first taste of Hearthstone’s next expansion: Perils in Paradise!

Here are some of the known issues we’re tracking this patch:

• The Buddy Button can’t be pinged. The team is targeting fixing this in the next major patch.
• Harth Stonebrew has gotten his iconic hands confused—the team is looking into it.
• Fairy Gillmother can generate herself. She’s supposed to let you wish for more fishes, not more wishes.
• Planar Telescope gives nothing if your most common type is not one of the minion types in the game and you’re not at Tier 6 (where there is an “All” type minion).

Battlegrounds Pool Updates:

• Madame Goya has been temporarily banned from the Hero Pool (Duos only) due to an unintended play pattern. The team is evaluating next steps.

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Since last month’s update, we’ve actioned nearly 642,000 additional accounts for botting. That is in addition to the bans we levied against players using cheating software to play illegal cards in Twist mode early in this season. We’ll continue regularly punishing these bad actors to make our Tavern a better place for all our real players.

This is on the known issues list, but we don’t have a timetable on its fix, sorry.

June 11 Updates

We’re rolling out further Hero Health adjustments to help encourage meta diversity. Now that things have started to settle, we’re aiming to have Tuesday afternoon be our time for these planned weekly updates going forward (while maintaining flexibility where needed).

The Lich King 27 → 25
Al’Akir the Windlord: 27 → 25
Kael’thas Sunstrider: 35 → 30
Xyrella: 33 → 32
Arfus: 20 → 18
Dr. Boom: 50 → 60
Guff Runetotem: 40 → 50
King Krush: 45 → 50
N’Zoth, the Corruptor: 40 → 45

June 7 Updates

Another Hero Health adjustment is rolling out now.

Hero Health Updates
Arfus: 25 → 20
Al’Akir the Windlord: 30 → 27
The Lich King: 30 → 27
Nozdormu: 35 → 32
C’Thun: 45 → 80
King Krush: 40 → 45
Arch-Villain Rafaam: 40 → 45
Xyrella: 30 → 33
Brann Bronzebeard: 35 → 38

June 3 Upd...

Patch 29.4.3 is a server-side hotfix patch rolling out now with the following updates and bug fixes.

Arena Updates

The draft card pool has been adjusted, with a handful of card swaps in and out of the card pool for each class and Neutral. Additionally, appearance rates of particular higher-impact cards have been decreased in Shaman, Demon Hunter, and Death Knight and increased in Paladin, Priest, and Warrior.

Bug Fixes and Game Improvements

• [General] Fixed a bug in the new player experience where some players were unable to skip the Apprentice Track if they hadn’t yet finished the Tavern Guide (players will need to restart their client after skipping for this fix to take effect).

• [Hearthstone] If Splendiferous Whizbang is Golden, it will now give Golden Hero Portraits and Hero Powers. (Non-Golden Whizbang will still give Golden Hero Portraits and Hero Powers if you have that hero Golden.)

...

You’d just make a post in the bug report forums, but thanks, we’ve got this on our radar.

HEARTHSTONE GIGANTIFY SWEEPSTAKES

OFFICIAL RULES

BY PARTICIPATING IN THE HEARTHSTONE GIGANTIFY SWEEPSTAKES (the “PROMOTION”), YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE OFFICIAL RULES AND YOU SHOULD READ THESE OFFICIAL RULES CAREFULLY. NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR RECEIVE A PRIZE. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF RECEIVING A PRIZE. YOU WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE TO ENTER THIS PROMOTION OR RECEIVE ANY PRIZE UNLESS YOU MEET ...

Oops, forgot to pin this. Sorry folks.

Patch 29.4.1 is a server-side patch rolling out now with the following updates and bug fixes.

Battlegrounds Updates

Hero Update

• Jandice Barov will not be offered in games with Naga or Elementals.

Armor Updates

The following Heroes now have more Armor:

• Scabbs Cutterbutter now has 13 Armor.

• Teron Gorefiend now has 14 Armor at higher ratings, still has 10 Armor at lower ratings.

• Tickatus now has 16 Armor.

• Maiev Shadowsong now has 16 Armor at higher ratings, still has 18 Armor at lower ratings.

• Captain Hooktusk now has 16 Armor at higher ratings, still has 15 Armor at lower ratings.

• Bru’kan now has 17 Armor.

• Guff Runetotem, Lich Baz’hial, and Mr. Bigglesworth now have 18 Armor.

• Fungalmancer Flurgl now has 18 Armor at higher ratings...

Patch 29.4 is now live, with the Dr. Boom’s Incredible Inventions Mini-Set and more!

Here are some known issues we’re tracking this patch:

• [Resolved] [Hearthstone] Blazing Transmutation has been unbanned.
• [Resolved] [Hearthstone] Sock Puppet Slitherspear doesn’t gain attack from Weapons.
• [Resolved] [Collection] Standard Pack doesn’t show up in the “NEW” tab in the Collection.
• [Cosmetics] Return Policy’s Golden art is bugged.
• [Updated] [Hearthstone] The team is investigating reports that Boom Wrench might be causing client freezes. Update: it appears the freeze is only for some devices and is brief–waiting it out appears to resolve the issue.
• [Resolved] [Collection] The team is investigating reports of occasional issues accessing the Collection.
• [Resolved] [Collection] The team is investigating reports of players unable to select a format when building a deck. As a workaround while th...

Hey everyone, I’m back again with another quick bot ban update.

Since our last update, we’ve actioned nearly 110,000 additional accounts. We’ll continue to take action against these abusive accounts to make the Tavern a fairer and more fun place for all our players. We’ll see you in the Tavern!

Patch 29.2.3 is a server-side patch, rolling out now with the following updates:

Battlegrounds Updates

• Heroes now have a Duos Armor level, distinct from their Solo Battlegrounds Armor levels. For most Heroes, their Duos Armor level is 2-3 Armor lower than their (higher ranks) Solo Battlegrounds Armor level.
• Duos turns from turn 7 onwards are now slightly longer than before.
• Mechs will be reactivated in Battlegrounds after this patch has rolled out.

Bug Fixes

• [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Alexstrasza’s Battlecry effect didn’t work properly with life-total adjusting effects (like Azerite Snake and Vampiric Blood).

• [Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where Golden Scrap Scraper didn’t function properly.

• [Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where Utility Drone didn’t function properly.

• [Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where Persistent Poet didn’t functi...

The following is being posted on behalf of Aleco Pors, Final Design Lead.

Hey everyone!

We’ve got a really big balance patch planned for later this week, with changes to around 30 cards, including buffs and nerfs—and a few Wild changes. Since this patch has different goals from most other patches, I’d like to provide you all with some more context as to what we’re thinking and how we got here.

In this patch, we are attempting to address issues which have cropped up with the overall health of Standard, as opposed to correcting issues with the health of the specific meta like we normally do. Alarm bells started to go off within the design team when we noticed that the power level of Hearthstone didn’t seem to drop much (if at all) after the recent annual rotation. This sparked a lot of internal discussion about certain gameplay patterns in the current meta – particularly hyper-efficient AoE board clears, “OTK” style decks that la...

Hey everyone, we have another bot ban update to share with you.

Since our last post, we’ve continued our regular cadence of anti-bot detection and actions. In that time, we’ve actioned over 240,000 additional accounts.

In Patch 29.2, we also made an update to Arena matchmaking as a proactive step against extreme play patterns specific to that Mode, sometimes referred to as “barcode accounts.” Now, if you repeatedly retire runs early, you will be put into a separate matchmaking pool for your run. Being able to retire an Arena run early is an important feature for when you want to play a different deck. But, for a small percentage of players, it’s used to repeatedly draft new decks until they get one they consider extremely strong. This chan...

Patch 29.2.1 is a server-side hotfix rolling out now with the following game updates and bug fixes.

Weekly Quest Update

The Weekly Quest requirements are now as follows:

• Use your Hero Power 30 times (instead of 40)
• Play Battlecry cards 75 times (instead of 100)
• Play Miniaturize or Mini cards 32 times (instead of 60)
• Win games in Tavern Brawl, Arena, or Battlegrounds 10 times (instead of 15)
• Win ranked Hearthstone games 10 times (instead of 15)
• Damage enemy heroes 400 damage (not changed this patch)
• Spend 750 mana (not changed this patch)

XP granted by the Weekly Quests is not changing from the new higher amount.

Dev Comment: To get these changes out as fast as we could, we’ve put them into this server-only hotfix. That means there will be some weirdness where the numbers look unchanged in the client, but function as described above (so your rank...

That’s not a bug: paying health isn’t taking damage.

Thanks to everyone reporting the Death Knight weapon freezing thing. The team’s looking into it.

Patch 29.2 is here, bringing with it Battlegrounds Season 7, Battlegrounds Duos, and much more! This is a big patch, so there are a few known issues we’re tracking. Refer to this post for updates throughout this patch.

The known issues we’re tracking this patch include:

• [Shop] Mac desktop clients are unable to access the Shop in patch 29.2. This will be resolved in our next major patch. In the meantime, you can still make any purchases through the web shop or mobile devices.
• [Cosmetics] There is a bug where the default Coin is generated in-game instead of your Favorited Coin. This is scheduled to be fixed in the next major patch.
• [Added 4/16] [Collection] The team is investigating reports of players unable to open their last pack in a stack. This is believed to be a purely visual bug related to packs granted when retiring Duels.
• [Added 4/16] [Battlegrounds] Using Reno’s Hero Power on Persistent Poet results in a visual ...

This month has been a busy month in our battle against the bots. Since our last update just three weeks ago, we’ve ratcheted up our bot detection and banned over 585,000 more bots–including over half a million bots throughout this week! We hope they’re shaking in their circuits.

Cheaters are not welcome in our Tavern. You can continue to help in the ongoing battle against these botters by using the in-game reporting feature. While you do, we’ll continue fighting on your behalf, too.

29.0.1 is a server-side patch, rolling out today with the following bug fixes and updates:

• [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where no-rarity Legacy cards that have versions entering Core in 29.0 were given a rarity, resulting in them appearing in packs. Players who erroneously opened these packs will receive a dust refund in an upcoming correction.

• [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Night Elf Huntress couldn’t target minions summoned by a Deathrattle in the middle of its Battlecry.

• [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where the different Silver Hand Recruits counted as different minions for purposes of cards like Tyr’s Tears.

• [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Infused Totemic Evidence still gave Strength Totem instead of Wrath of Air Totem.

• [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Shudderblock’s effect blocked damage in certain circumstances when it shouldn’t.

• [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Crafter’s Aura coul...