Hearthstone Dev Tracker

There is an old and impossibly beautiful coastal town in southern Italy by the name of Gallipoli that attracts tourists from far and wide in the summertime. This sleepy beach town is an endearingly well-preserved vestige of times long past. It also happens to be where Jolanda “Yocto94” Murra was born and raised before she moved to Rome to pursue a degree in medicine—and a professional career in esports.

She is getting close to wrapping up her university studies, but the esports success has been slow to roll in. However, the introduction of the Hearthstone Masters program has given Yocto94 a chance to stand out among the rest by qualifying for both ...

It’s time for another weekend of Hearthstone Grandmasters! As the weekly meta continues to evolve, we’re seeing Hunter surpass Mage as one of the most popular classes. You can find the all the decks submitted for Week 3 on the schedule page here.  

And Then There Were Six (Undefeated Players)

The vault is looted, the Violet Hold’s prisoners freed, and the streets of Dalaran are filled with chaos. It’s time to set the stage for the grand finale of the League of E.V.I.L.’s master plan - taking the entire magical city for themselves! Blastmaster Boom just needs you to take care of a few pests, first…

Your Target – The Underbelly

What’s the Plan?

Blastmaster Boom has everything he needs to get his plan in motion. You, the hired henchman, just need to keep the creepy crawlies of The Underbelly busy long enough for him to strap his definitely safe and thoroughly tested rockets to the magical city. Then, BLAST OFF!

The se...

Bomb Warrior and Tempo Rogue were the two most popular deck archetypes in Week 1 of Hearthstone Grandmasters. Both decks made an appearance in some form across all three regions over the weekend with Bomb Warrior going 26–28 (48% win rate) and Tempo Rogue going 18–17 (51% win rate).

While not as popular, Cyclone Mage dominated in Asia-Pacific and Europe, claiming a 71% win rate over 28 games played and making it Week 1’s most successful archetype. In Week 2 it is the most popular archetype, making up exactly half of the decks in play. 

The X-0 Bracket

Congrats to the 12 players who went undefeated on the weekend!

When it was announced that Dylan "FroStee" O’Mallon was on the Asia-Pacific roster for Hearthstone Grandmasters, his phone exploded with love from the ANZ gaming community. “I had to turn off my notifications, my phone was buzzing every two seconds!” he said. “It's kind of crazy, to be honest. I had to keep this hidden for a month. I was so happy when the initial Masters announcement happened that I just wanted to tell everybody!”

When he was five years old, FroStee began taking lessons in taekwondo, a Korean martial art that would grow to become much more than just a hobby. “I just never stopped,” said FroStee. “I've been doing taekwondo for about 20 years at this point. About seven years down the track, I got offered to start instructing and took it up because I enjoy it that much.”

FroStee spent most of his youth practicing taekwondo and bouncing around Australia, from Victoria to Adelaide to Perth and back again. He grew up with console gaming before making the...

After evaluating game data and working through internal and external feedback on the most popular decks currently in the meta, we’re looking to address the power level and overall pervasiveness of Rogue decks, alongside a specific interaction with Archivist Elysiana. Look for these changes in an update slated for May 22.

We chose to focus primarily on Rogue in this update due to seeing the meta stabilize around the class’s most popular decks. Currently, if you want to build a deck that is strong against Rogue, you have just one reasonable option: Warrior. If you compare Rogue to Warrior, however, you’ll find that the latter class has a wide variety of good and bad matchups, which makes it unlikely that it’ll overtake Rogue in popularity in the current meta.

While we recognize that there are other powerful and popular decks (like Token Druid, Conjurer Mage, and Mech Hunter), we decided to not address them in this update because they all have varied matchups. If any ...

Arch-Villain Rafaam has sent Blastmaster Boom back to the drawing board, and now that he’s finished perfecting his pet projects, the League of E.V.I.L. is in desperate need of new test subjects. Whoever is most eager to impress during the upcoming Mechanical Inn-vitational could even find themselves promoted to E.V.I.L. Employee of the Month!

Blastmaster Boom has cooked up an exciting new format to test the mettle of these would-be top employees. Participants will be divided into teams of two players, and to prove their adeptness to Blastmaster Boom, they will initially craft decks using only the following:

• The updated cards from the latest ...

When we introduced Hearthstone Masters we made it clear we intended to make changes to the program over time. Now, with our first full Masters Qualifiers season in the books, and ...

The stage is set! The full schedule for Hearthstone Grandmasters 2019 Season 1 has been published and our Grandmasters are currently practicing hard in anticipation of their first-round opponents. With the new Specialist format, the tried-and-true playstyles we’ve come to expect from some of these familiar faces has gone out the window. We are entering uncharted territory for most of these players, and while every matchup is worthy of a feature, these three stand out as “must-watch.”

Amnesiac vs. StrifeCro – Friday, May 17 at 3pm PDT / 11pm CET

Today’s Hearthstone update adds a whole new single-player adventure alongside game improvements and bug fixes. Read on for details!

New Single-player Adventure – The Dalaran Heist – Live on May 16!

A Dastardly Deed, Indeed:

Arch-Villain Rafaam has meticulously assembled a league of menacing and megalomaniacal supervillains to undertake his most audacious caper yet – stealing the magical city of Dalaran! As a low-level operative in Rafaam's League of E.V.I.L., you'll rampage through the streets and sewers of Dalaran ensuring that every part of the plan succeeds. Or, at the very least, you'll provide the distraction they need to accomplish their devious goals.

Here’s the Plan:

As with previous deckbuilding Solo Adventures, you'll choose a Hero and work your way through a gauntlet of increasingly difficult encounters, adding cards and powerful treasures to your deck with each win. If your Hero is defeated,...

Rafaam’s plan is set, the League of E.V.I.L. is descending on Dalaran, and the most heinous heist the world has ever seen is about to begin… the only thing missing is some heavy-hitting henchmen. To find out who’s prepared to fill out Rafaam’s roster, and to show off Hearthstone’s awesome new single-player content, The Dalaran Heist, we’ve gathered 8 of your favorite creators to battle it out in a massive two-day event. Tune in to find out who will impress the League and take home a slice of the $20,000 prize pool!

When:

• May 14 + 15 | 10am - 2pm PT each day

Where:

• Twitch
  • www.twitch.tv/playhearthstone
  ...

You’ve already signed up for the League of E.V.I.L. during the Rise of Shadows Pre-Release. Now, work your way up from the rank of “lackey” by hosting a Fireside Gathering to help the League pull off the heist of a lifetime!

Your Dalaran Heist Fireside Gathering

Host or attend a Fireside Gathering to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with friends and fellow adventurers as you scour the Violet Hold, traverse the lengths of the Dalaran Sewer, and claw your way through the Dalaran Bank’s mounds of gold in The Dalaran Heist, the biggest Solo Adventure Hearthstone has seen yet.

With a variety of modes and special gameplay rules available, no two runs will be the same.

Get started on The Dalaran Heist with the first wing, which will be available free on May 16. The next wing, which will be immediately accessible, can be unlocked for 700 gold or $6.99 USD—or you can get access to all five wings for $19.99 USD.

Requesting a Support Kit

We’ve been a little silent on the Fireside Gathering front recently, but that’s because we’ve been hard at work getting it ready for a big year! If you’ve never attended one before, Fireside Gatherings are a great opportunity to get together with friends old and new to play Hearthstone.

A key focus for us in the Year of the Dragon is to communicate with you ahead of big upcoming changes. We also want to be more flexible when it comes to about making changes that we think will lead to better experiences. So without further ado, here’s what’s in store for Fireside Gatherings this year!

Real Life Rewards

...

The final series of the HCT 2019 World Championship between Casper "Hunterace" Notto and Torben "Viper" Wahl will go down as one of the most electrifying matches in Hearthstone history. From a 1-Health runback opener to game-defining aggressive Alexstrasza play to an absolutely nutty march of Legendary minions courtesy of Arch-Thief Rafaam that saw not one but two Azalina Soulthiefs played—we could not have asked for a better way to send off the Hearthstone Championship Tour.

The series was as close as could be, but it was Hunterace who lifted the trophy at the end of it all. “It was pretty insane,” said Hunterace, “My heart rate was very high. I haven't played any of those games in practice!”

I am the Hearthstone World Champion!! ...

...

David "killinallday" Acosta is in Asia for the first time in his life this week to compete at the HCT 2019 World Championship in Taipei. On day one of the tournament, he defeated Mihai "languagehacker" Dragalin in the first round, only to fall just short of cracking the top eight in a 5-game series against China’s Xu "LFYueying" Kai.

“I think I played pretty well,” said killinallday. “[but] I roped out a turn and didn't have time to complete the turn, so that was pretty bad. To be fair, I’d say that ...

When Kacper "A83650" Kwieciński tried Hearthstone on a whim he chose his handle by typing in a few random characters. As his professional career took off, the name stuck. Today, A83650 will be the first Polish player ever to compete at a Hearthstone World Championship.

“It just feels like a dream come true,” said A83650, who has been receiving encouraging messages from members of the Polish Hearthstone community ever since his plane touched down in Taipei. “The Polish community has been really supportive of me, it’s always a good feeling to know they are cheering for me.”

Right off the bat, A83650 has his work cut out for him, facing Americas point leader David "Justsaiyan" Shan. “Lineup-wise, the matchup against Justsaiyan should be the hardest one,” said A83650. “Justsaiyan just built his decks better, his decisions were smarter. I need to high-roll the series in order to win. I'm feeling much better against Hunterace and Ike.”

...

Get ready for the most epic family reunion on the planet! BlizzCon® is returning to the Anaheim Convention Center on November 1 and 2, and you’re invited to join us for a weekend filled with games, esports, cosplay, and the latest news on everything Blizzard—all in celebration of the best community of playmates, teammates, and guildmates in the known universe.

Tickets to this year’s show go on sale May 4 at 10 a.m. PDT and May 8 at 7 p.m. PDT through AXS—check out the ...

Who better than the reigning Hearthstone World Champion, Chen "tom60229" Wei Lin, to give predictions on what the meta will look like onstage at the HCT 2019 World Championship?

“Bomb Warrior is the trendiest deck on the ladder now,” tom60229 said. “So, there will probably be two kinds of lineups in the tournament—control decks with an even slower curve to hunt the Warriors, and full aggro decks, likely in the form of Rogue and Druid, that ban out the Warriors.”

He's mostly right! Only Raphael "Bunnyhoppor" Peltzer, Mihai "languagehacker" Dragalin, and Torben "Viper" Wahl decided not to bring a Warrior deck to Taipei. Everyone but Luo "Roger" Shengyuan brought a Rogue deck, with most being the Tempo variant with Waggle Pick. Roger was also the only player to bring Control Paladin, featuring the High Priest Thekal and Nozari combo. The new Zoo Warlock with Sea Giant and Magic Carpet is present in many lists, as is Control Shaman, Midrange Hunter, and Khadgar Mage. D...

April 28 is the final qualifier for Masters Tour Las Vegas! That means we’re onto the next Masters Tour location. From May 7-June 30, Masters Qualifiers will open up for our next stop; Seoul, South Korea! Widely considered the epicenter of esports, there is no better place to throw a massive Hearthstone tournament. With $250,000 on the line, plus additional prizing from the soon-to-be-announced Esports Bundle, the competition is guaranteed to be heated!

Given South Korea’s vibrant history of competitive gaming, we thought it best to take the Masters Tour straight to its heart—a giant PC Bang! In case you don’t know what a PC Bang is, it’s simply a place that provides computers with internet access to the public that are commonly used for gaming. The IGR (Internet Gaming Room) will host Day 1 and Day 2 of the Swiss bracket on August 16 and 17, while the Finals will be played live at the famous OGN Studios on August 18!

How to Qualify