Hearthstone Patch Changes - Rumble Run Updates, Arena Bucket Changes
Today's Hearthstone client patch brings in changes to Rumble Run and the Arena.
- All class cards have had their pick quality either lowered or raised to get win-rates to as close to 50% as possible.
- Dust refunds from last month's nerfs are done.
- There is a higher chance to see card synergy with your shrine in card picks within Rumble Run.
- Rumble Run bosses should be more fair. They used internal data to tone down heavy hitters.
- When you lose in Rumble Run, your next run will offer your current shrine and the shrine from the boss you lost to in shrine selection.
Quote from BlizzardThis Hearthstone update mixes Rumble Run up for a refreshing new change, while also bringing in some updates to Arena buckets together with the cessation of December 2018’s dust refund. Read on for details!
Arena Updates
Following our Arena update last December, we have adjusted the appearance rate of each individual card available in Arena to ensure the overall win-rate of each class remains as close as possible to our ideal of 50%.
- Hunter, Rogue, and Warrior have had the average quality of their Arena picks lowered.
- Druid, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, and Warlock have had the average quality of their Arena picks raised.
December Update
The dust refunds that were available following our last update in December 2018 are no longer available as of this post.
Rumble Run Changes
Champions, rumblers, and trolls of all sizes! We’ve watched you spend a month punching faces in the Rumble Run, and we think there’s room for some changes based on how things have gone. Here’s what’s new with the Rumble Run.
Weighted Card Rewards
We’ve increased the possibility of synergistic cards for your shrine appearing more often. One of our primary goals with this mode was to showcase the nine troll champions and have you really get to know them. We wanted you to “live the dream” of fighting in the Gurubashi Arena, and to do so, we had to make sure that each Run had its own strong theme. Adjusting the card bucket offerings for decks and re-adding bonus buckets will help strengthen that experience.
Boss Deck Adjustments
One of our design goals with the Rumble Run was to provide huge, overpowered combat. Balancing at such a high power level is a challenge. When it works, it works great. You get epic, monumental combat against overwhelming odds. But when it doesn’t work, it feels random and swingy – like when the AI pulls an overwhelming combo. And since no one likes being repeatedly hit in the face with a club, we’ve pruned some of the power from the boss decks so that your Runs will play out more moderately. We have a lot of data about which bosses have the biggest body counts, and we’ve used that to target the worst offenders. Rumble Runs are now a little easier, but more importantly, they’ll feel a little more fair.
Shrine Selection Changes
In early builds of the Rumble Run, we allowed players to pick a class and shrine before playing. What we found was that playtesters immediately picked their favorite class, gravitated to a certain shrine, and played that shrine repeatedly.
We had wanted to encourage players to try different shrines, especially to experiment with stuff they normally wouldn’t, so we put the current random shrine drafting in place. While that helped achieve our initial goal, it removed that feeling of mastery – the ability to choose a shrine and play with it until you feel you’ve mastered it or exhausted its possibilities.
So we want to bring that back. With this update, whenever you lose, you can expect to always be offered the shrine you just lost with. The shrine that the boss used to beat you in your last run will also be offered, per the status quo.
Some Final Rumble Ruminations
We always prefer to experiment, try extreme ideas, and get feedback rather than play it safe. In true troll fashion, we went big with the Rumble Run and tried some different ideas to give this expansion a unique feel and to capture the thrill of stepping into an arena against known opponents for some superpowered brutality. It’s wallop or be walloped in there, for better or for worse.
One of the things we experimented with—and heard great feedback on—was about the earlier pack rewards for the Rumble Run. Previous Hearthstone missions awarded packs via quests for completing content. For The Boomsday Project, we gave packs out without a quest to celebrate the launch of the expansion’s missions. This time around, we front-loaded the rewards and gave players three extra packs on launch day instead of during the Rumble Run. We felt that packs might be more interesting to people during the initial weeks of the expansion.
As many of you have pointed out, this decision just made the missions feel especially un-rewarding. It’s always more gratifying to earn packs by competing a quest, rather than just being given them. Going forward, we’ll keep this feedback in mind for the launch of new single-player content.
We had a ton of fun making mode and really appreciate the time that many of you took to write out thoughtful feedback. Everything we learn helps make future content better.
And now, it’s back to the Rumble Run!
I beat it on my third try, yet I guess you just have to help out the sucky players that can't even win with the cheat guides available. Card back lost its value.
The whole mode was heavily RNG based. There were certain combinations that made the entire run trivial, while others were nearly impossible to do, just because of how the synergy was divided.
It is not "sucky players", just people with bad RNG results.
I hate RR. You get a nice run going, then some boss gets a nasty combo, kills your shrine on turn two or three, and you never recover. Basically you have to win a bunch of coin flips in a row. Not fun.
Like the druid shrine that gets attack based on the heroes attack at the end of turn.
Boss fight nr1:
Turn 1: Pounce + Claw = 4/7
Turn 2: Mark of the Wild = 6/9.
How do do beat that with your first round deck. Every time that boss comes round 1 or 2 its 99% instant loss.
Is this an internal patch or for the client? I haven't had to download anything yet
maybe they finally realized they can roll out balancing patches more often since its DIGITAL card game and its a lot easier than erratas for physical cards... one can only hope
Thoughtful feedback = Profit margin slideshows from accounting.
Well, is a step in the rigth direction, just need a patch where they open dungeon run to more recent cards and bring other archtypes to the classes.
I really like that they are willing to update single player content, and that they've acknowledged the lack of rewards in Rumble Run. Both are good signs for future PvEs.
Please blizzard... Remove legendaries from the arena! I am tired of seeing a lich king every two games!!
remove the abilty to pick them in cards like hallucination or other spells!
That would make the arena fair !
Luvly. I've played obscene amounts of the Rumble Run and while I would have welcomed the ability to just pick the shrine I want (seeing as I've beaten the mode with 20 out of 27 possible options, rolling the ones I haven't beaten yet has gotten so tedious I just stopped playing), this is the next best thing. The bucket adjustment is also very welcome, at least assuming it ends up doing what I hope it ends up doing. Running the Warrior Overkill shrine and not getting a single Rush minion the whole draft, then getting 2x Crowley as a Dragon Warrior blew. Getting repeatedly mauled by lvl 4 Hooktusk with double your deck size, card-stealing shrine with discounts and Raging Contender wasn't much fun either. Hopefully this brings things more in line without trivialising the content. Having gone this far, it would be a shame if the last 7 shrine wins were given to me essentially for free.
So many patches and patch after New year, wow, new HS Blizz better than ever. And patch for Singleplayer, wow x2. Maybe after some times, they will add new cards for Dungeon run or, maybe, new game modes, achievmments, stats. Pretty good start.
It would be nice if we could easily and reliably see the enemy Shrine before mulligan. As it stands we have to guess based on the brief moment we can see its graphic and stats before it gets hidden by the mulligan hand.
honestly I'm really appreciating these frequent updates. It really feels like they are actually caring about the game at this point (which is ironic considering Blizzard has been neglecting their other games in the last few months)
Definitely feels very weird to have 3 patches within a 6 week span. I think that might be a first for the team excluding any micro patches that fixed game breaking bugs.
Well, if they think, that this update will change the playrate of Rumble Run, they are seriously wrong.
I beat the rumble with the rogue steal card shrine. Yeah, everything was overtuned. There were times where you couldn't beat the first opponent due to their synergy. Winning came down to getting a weaker Last opponent. They should really add an incentive for beating multiple times.
that rogue shrine is so good, I do not know if I hard hard bosses because I just stole all the key cards...
And picking things to ensure that my shrine survived and being able to remove the minions just made it easier
oh my gosh, i had so much fun winning with that steal shrine! the whole thing was a blast. milling my opponent, getting cheap cards. oh, so much fun!
mage shrine on early lvls broken, his deck has great synergy and it s like constructed Reno mage. Yes, it s easy for some decks, but so much synergy OP vs some decks. And i hate when Opps has more card in their deck than me, it's not fair too.