Hearthstone Dev Tracker

The following is being posted on behalf of John McIntyre, Hearthstone Battlegrounds Lead Designer:

Hello tavern-goers, as we wrap up the current Battlegrounds Buddies patch and prepare for the upcoming Rise of the Naga Battlegrounds Season, I want to share some data from this past patch and explain some of our design philosophies when it comes to designing and balancing heroes.

First, let’s look at the overall active* player mmr distribution right now:

• The top 50% of players have reached 5700 mmr
• The top 25% of players have reached 6500 mmr
• The top 10% of players have reached 7000 mmr
• Congratulations to the top 1% of players who have reached 8300 mmr

I also want to share the top* 10 performing heroes for all players since the last balance patch (in alphabetical order):

• Cariel Roame
• Chenvaala
• Fungalmancer Flurgl
• George the Fallen
• Ini Stormcoil
• Lord Jaraxxus
...

Thanks for your concern, but this is not a bug. Cards in the Legacy set are not in Wild packs. As pointed out, the cards are able to be crafted if you want to play with them in Wild.

Yes, to those of you asking, these went live with the launch of Voyage to the Sunken City, like this post says. I’ve passed along your reports that the in-game text was not updated.

We are currently in the process of rolling out a server-side hotfix patch that makes the following updates:

• [EDITED*]: Sphere of Sapience has been banned in Duels and Casual due to a disconnect bug it caused. The card will be unbanned once the bug has been addressed.
• Speeds up the rate that minions that have been buffed “for the rest of game” appear in Bob’s Tavern.
• Fixes a bug causing crashes in Mercenaries.
• Fixes a bug causing Murky’s Tasks to not automatically update as intended under the new Task system.
• Fixes a bug where Wildfire could be added to your Duels deck after it was intended to be banned in Patch 23.0.1.
• Fixes a bug that converted Classic Decks to Wild after the Core Set update.
• Fixes a bug causing Paid Reward Track Battlegrounds Cosmetics to be removed from accounts if the player got a refund for an unrelated product purchase.

*EDIT: The Sphere of Sapience Wild ban did not display as intended, resulting in pla...

Yes, thanks. The team is aware and working on a fix, hopefully for this weekend, this hotfix was just already in flight at the time this issue was first discovered.

Patch 23.0.1 is a server-side hotfix, deploying right now. The patch includes balance changes to Battlegrounds and Duels, a pre-emptive balance change for Standard, and bug fixes.

Balance Changes:

• In order to prevent an unintended interaction after Standard rotation, Pandaren Importer is changing from a 2-mana 1/3 to a 3-mana 2/4. Because this is a server-side patch, Pandaren Importer will appear as though its stats have been affected by an in-game effect. This will be updated in an upcoming patch. Because of this change, regular copies of Pandaren Importer will be able to be disenchanted for their full dust value until April 20 at 10 a.m. Pacific. (Golden copies of Pandaren Importer are not craftable because they were on the United in Stormwind rewards track).
• Sub Scrubber (Ini Stormcoil’s Buddy) has been moved from Tavern Tier 2, to Tavern Tier 4. Because this is a server-side hotfix, the Tavern Tier will not appear correctly...

The decks awarded to new and returning players will be updated with the launch of Voyage to the Sunken City! As a reminder, returning players who have been away for 120 or more days will be prompted with a deck grant right after they log in. New players will be granted their starter deck after completing the tutorial, the Starter Quest quest chain, graduating from the New Player Ranks (Ranks 40-1), and then returning to the main menu.*

It’s possible players may not see the deck in their deck lists if they do not have an open deck slot when they choose their free deck. The cards for the deck (aside from Core Set cards) will still be added to their collections, so they can clear a deck slot and use the deck codes below to construct the decks. Core Set cards are free to all players and are earned by leveling your account.

*Limited one per account.

Field of Strife

Class: Demon Hunter

Enter Alterac Valley’s con...

After the patch, but no specific date planned. Should be soon, but you’ll understand that the devs are pretty busy today.

Edit: Just went live!

Hey all,

We’ve receiving reports that every change besides the adjustment for Worgen Greaser did not go live with the patch today. We’re pleasantly surprised with how this one change has created a perfectly balanced metagame though, so we’ve decided that this is working as intended.

Hey all,

Patch 23.0 is a big one, bringing with it the new Voyage to the Sunken City expansion, the Core Set update, and the next Hearthstone Year! There’s a lot going on, so follow this post for information about known issues in Patch 23.0.

~~

Patch 23.0 will be shipping with a few known issues:

• [Resolved 4/6]: The Sunken City Warlock collection achievement will be based off the wrong set’s cards at launch, so it might show progression (or even completion) before the expansion even launches. This will not impact the collection achievements that give diamond/coin rewards, as those are tracked in a different way. This will be resolved via hotfix shortly after the patch goes live.

• Three cards being added to the Core set in this year’s update (Bronze Explorer, Darius Crowley, and Wrathscale Naga) will show in your collection at the when Patch 23.0 goes live (April 5), instead of at the Core Set update (April 12). This is a visual-...

Patch 22.6.1 is a server hotfix going live on Wednesday, March 23. This patch includes Bug Fixes and changes to Battlegrounds.

Battlegrounds Changes:

• Friend of a Friend has been removed from the minion pool. See the Developer Comment for more details as to why.

• Several heroes are moving up Armor Tiers (more Armor):

  • Lord Barov, Millificent Manastorm, Onyxia, and Tavish Stormpike are now in Armor Tier 2 (2-5 Armor)

  ...

Hello all,

We wanted to let you know that the Friend of a Friend minion is being removed from Battlegrounds in an upcoming hotfix patch, currently scheduled for Wednesday.

A note from the Developers about this change:

Friend of a Friend led to drastic power spikes when combined with Brann, and drove play patterns requiring an extremely high number of actions per turn. While we think there is room in the game for these types of strategies, in this case it proved too pervasive and game-warping for the overall health of the game.

We know that some players have really enjoyed Friend of a Friend. Looking forward, we think it’s important to continue to push the boundaries of the game and explore what we can bring into it, but we also think it’s important to try to respond quickly when we’ve pushed too far. Keep an eye out for exciting updates as we continue to explore and fine-tune Battlegrounds to make it the best game mode it can be!

Hey all,

Follow this post for information about known issues in Patch 22.6:

• [Resolved 3/18]: There was an issue with the 22.6 mobile client that required the patch to be re-submitted to the mobile marketplaces, causing delays. The patch is now available on all marketplaces.

• We are aware that the Tavern Brawl switches for players who update to Patch 22.6 (from “Blood Magic” to “Party Portals!”). This will not be switched back before the Tavern Brawl swaps over automatically for next week. We have identified the cause of this issue in order to avoid it in the future.

• [Resolved 3/21]: We are investigating issues with Achievement notifications and tracking with the new patch, including the return of the “phantom achievement” issue that was intended to be fixed in this patch.

• The celebration and award for completing all Books of Mercenaries books is not appearing properly. The team is working on a temporary sol...

Hello all,

We identified an issue with our mobile version of the 22.6 patch. We’ve fixed the issue and resubmitted the patch to the mobile storefronts, but it can take some time for those storefronts to update. We expect the 22.6 patch to become available over the next few days, as those storefronts update.

Please be aware that until the mobile patch is available, updating to 22.6 on desktop will block you from being able to play Hearthstone on your mobile device. We advise any players who plan to play on mobile to wait until the 22.6 patch is available on all their devices before updating.

3/18 morning update: Mobile updates for Google and Samsung went live last night. We are still waiting for Amazon and iOS services to update. We will continue to update as we have more information.

3/18 late morning update: We are seeing the patch available on all storefronts! If it is not yet available on your specific device, it should become availabl...

Bigger hotfixes sometimes get patch notes posts (like 22.4.3 just did). Usually, we do that for bigger planned patches and/or if there are card changes that we feel need to be shown in patch notes format. Smaller hotfixes tend to get their information shared in these known issues posts, in the “[DATE] Update:” portions under the bugs list.

Hotfixes usually take a few hours to roll out. So that fix was completed about a week ago.

This is not a bug. Those two cards are interacting as intended, based on how their texts read and how effect timings generally work in the game. When you play Barov, the base stats are set to 1 (like it normally is when just played from hand) and then Clockwork Assistant’s continuous effect applies, which results in it staying at the same stats.

Yes, this was raised in a prior Known Issues post and is scheduled to be fixed in the next major patch (22.6).

No problem. Congrats on getting that far and good luck on the final push!

There’s no bonus winstreak stars from Diamond 5 to Legend, is that where you’re playing?