A new patch, previously announced last week, just went out. Some of the annoying bugs introduced in the last patch were fixed. We’ve also got a few Battlegrounds balance changes in the wake of Open Beta release tomorrow. Here’s a quick list of most important changes:
Hearthstone
- Daily Quests can be re-rolled.
- Squelch function works once again.
- Different Android crashes were fixed.
Battlegrounds
- Nerfs to Mama Bear, Kangor’s Apprentice and Infinite Toki.
- Buffs to King Mukla and Lord Jaraxxus.
Keep in mind that the Battlegrounds patch was being worked on BEFORE BlizzCon, so it’s not based on data they have right now from thousands of players. New Heroes and minions will be introduced early in December, so that’s most likely when they will push a new balance patch too. The goal is to update Battlegrounds monthly, possibly even more often, in order to keep things fresh and interesting.
Besides balance changes and new heroes, more functions should be coming soon. We should finally get access to more stats, in-game leaderboards should give you hints of what minion tribes your opponents are playing, and we should be able to sell minions directly from hand. Those features don’t have any ETA yet, so they might not come out in the next patch.
Read more below!
Hi all,
We’re in the process of releasing a new update, which is live on PC and rolling out over the next few hours on mobile operating systems. This update contains a variety of optimizations to improve performance when playing Battlegrounds, especially on devices with fewer than 2GB of RAM. Players on devices with lower memory may still experience degraded performance.
Please note that if you do not download the client update before going into a match, you will see some visual differences on the cards / heroes due to the discrepancy in server and client versions.
iOS players, please ensure you have updated to the latest version of iOS to receive the greatest performance increase from these optimizations.
There were some balance changes that we identified based on our initial testing that didn’t quite make it in for release, so we’re making those live with today’s update.
Balance Changes
- Minions
- Mama Bear
- Changed from 5/5 giving +5/+5 to 4/4 giving +4/+4
- Kangor’s Apprentice
- Changed from 4/8 to 3/6
- Hero Powers
- Infinite Toki
- Temporal Tavern
- Changed from 1 cost to 2 and now reads “Refresh Bob’s Tavern. Add a minion from a higher Tavern Tier.”
- King Mukla
- Bananarama
- Changed to “Passive Hero Power: Whenever you buy a beast, add a Banana to your hand.”
- Jaraxxus
- Bloodfury
- Hero power changed from 3 cost to 2.
Game Fixes & Improvements
- Squelch now works as intended + no longer causes crashes under certain circumstances
- Daily Quests can now be rerolled
- Hallow’s End Arena Daily Quest can now be completed
- A variety of Android crashes have been fixed
- Memory optimization for Battlegrounds for devices with less than 2GB of RAM
We’re aiming to make updates fairly regularly – every month or so, or perhaps a little faster. We’ll have more information on future updates over the next few weeks. While I’m here, I wanted to talk a bit about Battlegrounds and what we’re seeing and feeling since we launched in beta last week.
Overall, we’ve been thrilled by the response players have had to Battlegrounds, and we’ve been closely watching the feedback coming in. We’re continuing to work on a variety of things coming in the future, but I’d like to call out to a few of them. Please note all of this is future-looking – none of this is getting added quite yet.
New Heroes and Minions!
We’ve been cooking up some new heroes and minions, and we’ll be making them live within the game with our next update. We don’t want to say too much right now, but a couple of very familiar faces will be included.
Stats!
We know the amount of gameplay information that informs how players are performing is limited right now, and we are already hard at work on an advanced stats screen that will be available in the next update. We’ll have much more detail soon, but expect things like your top 5 heroes by wins, most played heroes, how many first place finishes you’ve completed, and more.
Leaderboard Updates
We want to give players more useful information about their opponents so they can make more informed gameplay decisions and build more complex strategies. On the left-hand leaderboard we’re going to be adding some addition information on the minion types that your opponents have. For example, you’ll be able to see that one of your opponents currently holds three murlocs and two demons.
The Selling Experience
We want to make some improvements to how minions are sold, allowing minions to be sold from your hand. We think this will make it into the game some time early next year, and we’ll have more updates on how that is progressing, especially if we think it will come later than January.
Open Beta begins tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov. 12th @ 10am PT! We hope to see you all in the Tavern <3
Cheers,
Chris_Attalus
