Some Classic Cards Moving to Wild, Three Expansions this Year, New Rogue Hero - Year of the Mammoth
Wow. Some big things are coming with the new Standard rotation into Hearthstone.
The Rundown
- Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and The League of Explorers all rotate out of Standard with The Year of the Mammoth.
- Six cards from Classic are being moved to Wild-only.
- The cards will not be disenchantable for their full crafting amount like normal with card changes, instead, Blizzard is just going to give you the full dust value of each card you own.
- You can still dust the cards once the rotation hits if you no longer want them - free extra dust!
- If you own a Golden and Normal copy of a card, you will only get the full dust value of the Golden version.
- You will only get the full dust value for the copies you have that can be included in a deck. If you have 3 Azure Drakes, disenchant one today.
- We will not see an Adventure this year. Instead, we will see three ~130 card expansions!
- The second and third expansions will feature a playable story, like an adventure.
- Cards will still only come from card packs.
- A Heroic Tavern Brawl will be going live sometime after the first expansion releases, using the Wild format.
- Blizzard is going to work on doing more Wild tournaments.
- Daily Login Rewards! At least for the start of the new rotation. Includes Dust, Gold, Expansion Packs, and "a few other surprises".
- Rogues are getting Maiev Shadowsong, a new hero! Win 10 games of Hearthstone in Standard when the rotation occurs and she's all yours.
- We will see some Deathrattle build-arounds in upcoming sets.
Cards Moving From Classic to Wild
Six cards are moving over to a new Wild-only set called the Hall of Fame set. If you own any of these cards, you will keep them and gain dust equal to their creation value when the rotation hits.
We recommend crafting these cards if you don't have them already, especially the golden versions. It's like loaning Blizzard your dust, and they let you keep the card as interest!
Discuss The Move
Discuss The Move
Discuss The Move
Discuss The Move
Discuss The Move
Discuss The Move
Announcement Post
Quote from BlizzardWe’ve got a lot of great things on the horizon for Hearthstone in 2017, including new content launches, innovative ways to get together and play with friends, improvements to keep Hearthstone fresh and exciting, and more! Read on to get the full scoop on what’s happening this year.
Year of the Mammoth Roadmap
2017 marks the end of the Year of the Kraken and the beginning of a new Hearthstone Year: The Year of the Mammoth. Each new Hearthstone Year brings a fresh start in the form of a new Standard format. Once the Year of the Mammoth officially begins with the first major expansion of 2017, Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and League of Explorers cards will become exclusive to Wild.
Set Rotation Is Coming
Last year, we introduced a New Way to Play, which introduced the Standard and Wild game formats to Hearthstone.
In order to keep Hearthstone exciting and accessible as more cards are added, Standard allows players to use the most recently released cards, as well as a core of Basic and Classic cards. Our overall intention with Standard is to keep the game feeling fresh for all of our players, and to allow newer players to jump into Hearthstone quickly, without collecting lots of cards to build a competitive deck. Standard also gives our developers more freedom when designing new cards for the future.
However, over the course of the Year of the Kraken, certain cards in the Classic set have contradicted these goals. When cards show up too frequently in decks and are considered auto-includes, deck-building becomes more limited. Deck variety stagnates, potentially interesting build-around cards fall by the wayside, and the gameplay experience begins to feel less dynamic. Most cards should feel like situational additions to a deck, depending on the deck archetype the player is trying to build.
To help meet our goals, certain cards from the Classic set will become exclusive to the Wild format. These cards will be added to the new Hall of Fame set, which will also include cards that are currently in the Reward set.
Neutral Cards
Developer’s Note: The first three of the six Classic cards that will be added to the Hall of Fame set are powerful Neutral cards that show up in many decks and reduce the chance of new cards having an impact. This is truer for cards in the 5+ mana cost range because players tend to use fewer of these cards in a deck.
Azure Drake is a strong Neutral card that ended up being a bit too versatile, and thus became one of the most played cards in the game. There should be more five drop options for players, rather than considering Azure Drake an auto-include.
Similar to Azure Drake, it’s hard to see a card at the six mana cost out-value Sylvanas. In addition, Sylvanas has the most powerful Deathrattle effect in the game—as a comparison, the Priest card Mind Control costs 10 mana. We have exciting Deathrattle build-arounds coming soon, and in combination with Sylvanas, they would be too powerful for Standard.
Ragnaros is heavily played in both control and mid-range decks and even shows up as a finisher in certain types of aggro decks. His high immediate value and strength at the eight mana cost made the decision during deck-building, “Is this eight mana minion better than Ragnaros?” rather than, “Is this eight mana minion the best choice for my deck type?” Dozens of cards in the seven to nine mana range never saw play because Ragnaros was always the easy choice in that range, and some decks only want to run one high cost card.
Class Cards
Power Overwhelming allows for extremely mana-efficient minion trades or high spikes of damage for only one mana. Keeping this card exclusive to Wild will prevent some crazy combinations and spike damage. Warlock decks also tend to use lots of Classic cards, so the decks changes less when new expansions release. This change will help increase the variety of cards in Warlock decks over time.
Freeze Mage is a fun deck that has been around for over three years now, and we’d like to see more variety with Mage decks after each major release. This move allows Freeze Mage to continue existing in Wild, while creating more variety in Standard. Ice Lance also prevented us from making powerful Spell Damage cards and designs that allowed you to duplicate your cards. Ice Lance was also a very high burst damage card, sometimes being a key component of 30 damage combos.
Stealth is a very powerful mechanic, and can also be very frustrating to play against—more for some classes than others. Hearthstone should ultimately be a game of plays and counter plays, and Conceal makes it increasingly more difficult for other classes to interact with Rogue minions as time goes on. We considered promoting Gadgetzan Auctioneer to Wild instead, but in the end we decided to move Conceal because Auctioneer has proven to be one of the most skill testing cards in the game. We think the power level of Auctioneer decreases with this change, and games where Auctioneer is played will be a bit more interactive.
We wanted to allow players to disenchant Classic cards that are being added to the Hall of Fame set for full dust refunds, but then felt that incentivizing players to dust their cool Wild cards was counter to our goal of making Wild awesome.
So instead, we're just going to give you the dust, and you can keep the cards!
Up to the maximum number of cards you could put in a deck, we will give you the full dust value of any cards you have that are being added to the Hall of Fame set. (Yes, that means if you have at least one Golden Ragnaros, you'll get 3200 dust!) The dust will be automatically awarded upon log-in once the Year of the Mammoth begins.
Adventuring in Expansions
Looking back, we learned a lot in 2016 with the introduction of the Year of the Kraken. One of the things we’d like to put additional focus on for the Year of the Mammoth is having additional deck-building options and deck variety in Hearthstone. To help give players additional tools and options to accomplish this, we are changing up the way we handle our release cycle. Previously, a Hearthstone Year alternated between Expansions and Adventures.
For the Year of the Mammoth, our release cycle will include a ~130 card expansion at the start of the year, a ~130 card expansion in the middle of the year, and another ~130 card expansion at the end of the year.
Why the change of release cycle?
At their core, Adventures paint colorful and thematic stories about the Hearthstone universe. Imagine being able to learn about the history and lore behind each of our sets inside the game in a similar way! Defining who the Jade Lotus are through a series of battles between the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan families would have been a great way to supplement the overall Gadgetzan story arc. That concept is something we would like to do more of in future sets: Take the storytelling and cool missions of Adventures, and combine them with the card pools of expansions.
Cards will be acquired via packs like other expansions in the past; additionally, each release will include optional single-player missions that will help develop the expansions’ thematic narratives and offer fun challenges.
We’d like to continue being flexible and refine the way we roll out content so it’s more enjoyable for all of our players. The second expansion of 2017 will be our first step into this new design, and we plan on building on this concept over time. Additional details about our free single player content will come at a later time.
Where the Wild Cards Are
With the cards from Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and League of Explorers becoming exclusive to Wild, the Wild format is going to be more exciting than ever before! For our players that enjoy playing in Wild, we’ll be supporting it in more ways in 2017.
Sometime after the release of our next expansion, we plan to run a Heroic Tavern Brawl utilizing the Wild format. With so many cards at your disposal, our most passionate and hardcore Hearthstone players and deck-builders will be put to the test.
We will also be collaborating with third-party tournament organizers to promote additional Hearthstone tournaments using the Wild format. Whether players are dueling in competitive Standard or Wild, we want our community to be excited about all of the various ways to play Hearthstone, and we hope additional official support for both formats will help to accomplish this.
We’re super excited about the ever-growing Wild ecosystem, and we’re looking for new and interesting ways to continue supporting it in the future.
Gather ‘Round for Fireside Gatherings
If you’re not familiar with Fireside Gatherings, they’re a great way to get out and meet people just as passionate about Hearthstone as you are! Fireside Gatherings mean a lot to us, and we’re planning on beefing up this program and adding additional in-client features to support Fireside Gatherings during the Year of the Mammoth. Keep an eye out for more information about Fireside Gatherings closer to the release of our first expansion this year—it’s never too late to become an Innkeeper!
Celebrate the Year of the Mammoth Together!
That’s not all for the Year of the Mammoth! Before the release of our next expansion, we’ve got a flurry of activity planned to support its launch: Daily login rewards will be available for a limited time— offering dust, gold, and expansion packs—as well as a few other surprises in the weeks before launch to blaze a trail for everything our next expansion has to offer.
Awardin’ a Warden
Login rewards aren’t the only things we’re offering to get players excited for the Year of the Mammoth: A new Hearthstone Hero approaches the Tavern!
The new Rogue Hero, Maiev Shadowsong, has emerged from the shadows, eager to become a part of your Hearthstone collection after 10,000 years of tolerating bad “You are not prepared” jokes from Illidan. Legion beware: Adding this vengeful Night Elf to your collection will be easier than teaching an old felhound new tricks. Just win 10 games of Hearthstone in Standard Ranked or Casual mode after the next expansion officially launches to acquire her.
Year of the Mammoth Wrap-up
There’s a lot on the horizon for Hearthstone in 2017; we hope you’ve enjoyed this look into the year ahead and we’ll see you at the Inn!
With the 3 Class-specific cards rotating out, before there was an equal number of class cards in the Classic set, but now the other classes have +1 more card. I kinda think they need to be replaced from another card from a set rotating out, or has rotated out.
Wild only after 2nd quarter expo
Insane changes. Need insight onto the next release before judgement on the standard-to-wild card cycle. Insane
I always though the cards nerfed after game release should revert to pre-nerf form in Wild.
So, as Ive got it, if you own a golden and a normal version of this card, you will recieve only the golden value as dust, while keeping the dust. So, i made some math about investing dust and profit from the whole "event". Basically, the most efficient way in terms of "Dust gained" divided on "Dust spent" is crafting golden Rag and Sylvanas, while keeping the normal ones. Why so? Well, lets say you currently own normal Rag and normal Sylvy. You collect dust to craft their golden versions without touching regulars, so after the countdown to the Mammoth Year ends, you recieve 3200 dust for each golden version, and you still have normals.
So, what do you do next? There are two branches: profitable and aesthetical. In the first way you dust your goldens, and get additional 1600 dust for each, 3200 pure profit in total, and you still have regulars to play with in the Wild, the second direction you just dust the regulars, so you basically convert regulars into normals with 400 dust profit for each(considering you didnt dust them to craft goldens, as i said). The thing is, that if you crafted those cards, you spent 1600 for regular, 3200 for golden, equals 4800, then got 3200 refund, and then dusted the regular one, got 400. So, -1200 dust, if you didnt get those from packs. Basically, i advice you to choose the profit line if you crafted those, in that case you cover your 1600 dust spent on normal one by disenchanting the golden card after the refund as been applied, while keeping the card.
As you can see, you either get the dust from crafted normals back while keeping it, ir you upgrade your regular legendaries into golden one with a flavor.
What about non-legendary cards?
I calculated the following thing: if you craft both golden copues, while owning the eegulars, you need 800+800+800+1600 = 4000 dust, and it will grant you 500 dust profit. I agree that this is not that inpressive to spend 4000 to get 4500. You still can only manipulate with the legendaries. Spending 6400, recieving 3200 of profit. In total, the entire thing can give ypu 3700 dust, if you own 10400 dust, which is 35% profit rate of the original, or you can just stop at 6400 dust, recieving 3200, which is 50% rate. Its up to you whether you would like to invest further dust for less major profit.
Hope this will help to clear the consideration of the large investment nessessarity, if you ponder about it.
If you already own Rag and Sylvanas, crafting the golden just to dust them after is the exact same as not crafting the goldens and just keeping the regulars.
Your math is correct that you would get 3200 dust in profit - but if you already own Rag and Sylvanas you'll get that anyway for getting 1600 dust for each when the rotation hits. 3200 in profit lol
Ow, right, i kinda forgot that just owning the normal legendary gives you 1600. Well, in that case the entire bunch is nedsedsary if you want to play golden legendaries with no additional spendings. My bad i didnt consider the "easy way". Anyway, thats clear now, thanks.
Hah, i actually have exactly 4000 dust.
But when it will be?
I can't find the info : when we will open Classic packs after the rotation, will we be able to find "Hall of fame cards" inside ?
Anyone noticed on expansion's release picture a possible themes for expansions? First this year has some kind of colorful plants (Un'Goro) and second one could possibly be Icecrown citadel? Third one looks like a bag of coins.
Correct me if I'm wrong but:
Is it a good idea to just craft all these golden now because you'll get the dust back later, and then get to keep them golden as well?
The problem is that know we don`t know certain, If we can disenchant the cards after the rotation... cause this post says not disenchantable, Ben brode say you can disenchant it.Wrong you can certain disenchant it!(Assume we can disenchant it after the expansion):example if you have a regular Ragnaros
1.keep Regular Ragnaros, do nothing: +1600 Dust
2.keep Regular Ragnaros, craft golden: +0 Dust
3.Disenchant Regular Ragnaros, craft golden: +400 Dust
4. keep Regular Ragnaros, craft golden, after rotation disenchant it: +1600 Dust
If you want to craft a second legendary, then you should take option one
(If you don`t have any ragnaroses, then craft golden or regular for free)
We know for certain you can disenchant the cards, the post does not say "disenchantable." Anywhere. At all. You could read the post, maybe, and find this out?
Good thoughts thanks for posting!
I actually looked at my cards and I already have them all golden except for 1 copy of Conceal. I guess they have been that good over the past 3 years. haha
Ah ok perfect cause somebody said you can`t and I just overflown this post. Sorry for the false information, but the rest is right
Always nerfing (move to wild) Rogue cards. Disgusting.
I feel very neutral (pun not intended) about the cards being rotated to Wild, as they do remove some of the stronger cards in the Classic set, in which keeping them forever would be problematic. At the same time though, it will be harder for new players to get better decks (in other words, it hurts the F2P/New player experience). Out of all of the cards they rotated out, I think the most questionable one in my opinion is Ice Lance. The other cards were played in almost every single deck of their class (and the Neutrals were played in many decks of many different classes), but Ice Lance was only played in Freeze mage so it feel very weird.
I like the idea of 3 expansions and no adventures this year. More cards means more available decks and cards to use as well as an ever growing card pool. I always love seeing new cards as well.
I think the way you unlock Maiev is MUCH, MUCH better than with the other heroes. No stupid payments or gimmicks, just playing Hearthstone, which really should be how these alternate heroes were unlocked in the first place.
The Argument for Ice Lance was that it limited future design regarding +Spell bonus or card discounts. As it would be too easy to do OTKs. That is why I highly agree with their choice, even though it was only played in Freeze Mage, as the number of deck archetypes it is presented in is not the only point to consider ;)
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