
If his playrate doesn’t drop significantly with this change, we’ll evaluate further changes at the next opportunity. We don’t want him to be one of the most popular cards in the next expansion, and our goal with this change is to lower his playrate across all ranks. He plays an important role in giving players agency against powerful late-game plays, but he can also be very frustrating to lose to. The following cards have been adjusted down in power:ĭev Comment: Theotar is a defining card in the current meta.
HEARTHSTONE BATTLEGROUNDS UPDATE PATCH
He is powerful and popular, but we don’t want this patch to completely shake up the meta, because we have something fun coming in Patch 24.6 and we want to see how Renathal performs in the next expansion before making changes to him. The one notable outlier that is not getting changed, but which we are keeping a close eye on, is Prince Renathal. Our goal with this patch is to reduce frustration and give weaker decks a bit more breathing room by reducing the overall power level of Hunter. I have never bought it, just on principle.Patch 24.4.3 is a data-only client patch, scheduled for October 13, that includes the following updates and bug fixes:ĭev Comment: The meta is relatively stable right now, with just a few outliers. It is priced at 1,500 Runestones, or $14.99 or your currency equivalent. At the time of writing, the only content piece that is genuinely paywalled is the battle pass for Battlegrounds, the game’s autobattler mode, which does offer a selection of four heroes instead of two, bringing a minor competitive advantage. But you will always be able to get a high-level competitive deck with the exact 30-card list you’re looking for. Will you have fewer options and variety as a free-to-play player? Will it involve a lot of grind to keep up? Absolutely. We can debate the definition, but there is no denying that any player can craft any deck, and there are no exclusive upgraded cards with superior stats that are only available for real money. The pay-to-win question, of course, makes no sense. There is no consumer benefit to the system, and it’s really a sign of aggression and desperation on the part of the bean counters. It’s nothing new, nor is it anything useful: you need to buy bundles of the stuff with real money and then make purchases that don’t quite match the bundled totals. The game also added Runestones, one of those predatory premium currencies that are so common in mobile games. A revamped rewards track system and a steady trickle of seasonal events also add more resources as you play. There is also duplicate protection in place now, meaning you can’t open excess copies of cards you already own.
HEARTHSTONE BATTLEGROUNDS UPDATE FOR FREE
Instead of the Classic set, which was mostly set in stone, there is now a rotating yearly core set of cards, which is made available for free for all players for the time they’re available in Standard. This core system has stayed in place, but many improvements have been made in the intervening years.


Unlike a physical card game like MTG, there is no secondary market, meaning if you want to get a card, you need to either open it from a pack or craft it with Arcane Dust you’ve earned by disenchanting excess copies of other ones at just one-fourth of their actual value. At its launch, Hearthstone’s economy incorporated almost all the trappings of collectible card games and combined it with the predatory elements of modern free-to-play games.
