Some exciting news from Hearthstone's Battlegrounds today as we've learned of some huge changes coming via a blog post on the official website.
The patch will go live on February 26th and will not only include 7 brand new Heroes, but the addition of the mode's first new minion type: Dragons! We’ve highlighted the key attributes of the new minions below and included Blizzard’s official statement about the upcoming patch.
Dragons
- 18 new Dragon minions are being added.
- Some dragons become more powerful as you increase the size of your Dragonflight.
- Tactical positioning of Dragons can unleash powerful effects.
- Like many Battleground minions, Dragons can grow very large in size through synergies.
Non-Battleground Highlights
- Twitch Drops returns! Potential for 2 Descent of Dragons packs!
- Hearthstone is turning 6, which Blizzard celebrates with an Anniversary Event starting March 4th
- Events include special Tavern Brawl, Legendary questline and a heaping helping of log in rewards.
- There's also 2 special bundles on the store. A Mage specific one and the Khadgar Hero Set.
- With the patch also comes the usual bug fixes and new Arena Rotation.
Quote from BlizzardWith the 16.4 patch on February 26, we're adding Dragons as a new minion type to Battlegrounds! Galakrond and Reno Jackson, who recently spread his scaly wings for the first time as the mighty Renegos in Galakrond's Awakening, will join the five original Dragon Aspects as new Heroes!
18 new minions will be added alongside them, 12 of which will be the new Dragon minion type. All but two of these minions are new to Hearthstone altogether, exclusive to Battlegrounds! You can read more about the Dragons update below.
We're celebrating the first new minion-type in Battlegrounds with Twitch Drops! From February 26 at 11 a.m. PT - February 29 at 5:00 p.m. PT, watch 3 total hours of any Hearthstone stream on Twitch to get 1 Descent of Dragons card pack. Watch for 6 hours (consecutive or non-consecutive) to get another one! Watch time accumulates across the entire Hearthstone category, so long as your Battle.net and Twitch accounts are linked.
Link Your Accounts
Before you can receive awards, you'll need to link your Twitch.tv and Battle.net accounts. Here's how:
- Log in or create an account on Twitch.tv.
- Navigate to the Settings menu by clicking your account name in the top-right corner of the home screen.
- Navigate to the Connections tab of the Settings menu.
- Find the Battle.net section, then follow the instructions after selecting a region and clicking Connect.
- When connecting accounts, be sure that you're currently logged into the Battle.net account on which you'd like to receive your rewards.
The official rules for Twitch Drops can be found here.
That's the Spirit!
More celebrations are in order, as Hearthstone is turning six! To commemorate the occasion, we've planned a limited time anniversary event beginning March 4 that will bring special Tavern Brawls, a new legendary quest line, and a heaping helping of log-in rewards. Log in between March 4 at 10 a.m. PT - March 17 at 10 a.m. PT to receive 2 Rise of Shadows packs, 2 Saviors of Uldum packs, 2 Descent of Dragons packs, and the Year of the Dragon card back!
Mage Pack Bundle
For the first time ever, we’re offering a class-specific pack for a limited time! From February 26 – March 4 you can get 5 Mage Packs containing strictly Mage class cards from Standard (The Witchwood, The Boomsday Project, Rastakhan's Rumble, Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum, and Descent of Dragons) for $9.99!
Khadgar Hero Set
Khadgar is back! For a limited time from February 26 – March 4, you can add the Archmage Khadgar to your collection for $9.99, complete with unique entrance and Hero Power animations, voiced emotes, and a thematic card back!
New Battlegrounds Heroes
Galakrond
- Galakrond's Greed [Cost 1]: Replace a minion in Bob's Tavern with a minion from a higher Tavern Tier.
Deathwing
- ALL Will Burn! [Passive]: ALL minions have +3 Attack.
Ysera
- Dream Portal [Cost 1]: Refresh and add a Dragon to Bob's Tavern.
Nozdormu
- Clairvoyance [Passive]: Your first Refresh each turn costs (0).
Malygos
- Arcane Alteration [Cost 0]: Replace a minion with a random one of the same Tavern Tier.
Alexstrasza
- Queen of Dragons [Passive]: After you upgrade Bob's Tavern to Tavern Tier 5, Discover two Dragons.
Reno Jackson
- Gonna Be Rich! [Cost 4]: Make a friendly minion Golden (Once per game).
New Battlegrounds Minions
Battlegrounds Balance Changes
George the Fallen
- Boon of Light Hero Power cost reduced from 4 to 3.
Sneed's Old Shredder
- Moved from Tier 6 to Tier 5.
Mama Bear
- Old: 4/4 Beast, Whenever you summon a Beast, give it +4/+4 - New: 5/5 Beast, Whenever you summon a Beast, give it +5/+5.
Tavern Tier 6
- Starting cost of Tavern Tier 6 has been reduced to 10 Gold (down from 11).
Dev Insight: Tavern Tier 6 has a lot of exciting minions and we'd like players to have more of an opportunity to reach it than they have. We're also trying to make Tavern Tier 6 more interesting by adding some of these powerful new minions.
Removed Heroes
- Professor Putricide
Dev Insight: We'd like to go back to the drawing board with Professor Putricide. We're going to disable him for now to make way for our new Heroes, but you'll likely see him return in the future with some changes.
Removed Minions
- Shielded Minibot
- Annoy-o-Tron
- Mounted Raptor
- Phalanx Commander
- Psych-o-Tron
- Tortollan Shellraiser
- Piloted Sky Golem
- Festeroot Hulk
- Boogeymonster
- Sated Threshadon
Dev Insight: We're removing some minions to help make room for the new minions. We also want to balance out the minion pool a bit. For example, there were way more Mechs in Battlegrounds than any other minion type. We're also removing some of the minions that aren't performing very well and ones that have generally been less exciting to play with.
Game Improvements and Bug Fixes
- Speeding up animations from 0.8s > 0.2s across all game modes for Overkill, Lifesteal, Poisonous, Inspire, and cards that reference "Whenever" and "After" in their text, outside of some special cases.
- "Recruit" will no longer be displayed on the turn timer when a player is about to lose in Battlegrounds.
- Rafaam's Hero Power will no longer trigger a Triple notification before you transition to the combat phase in Battlegrounds.
- Fixed a visual issue in which Golden Primalfin Lookout would sometimes display Golden Murloc cards.
- Fixed an issue where the scoreboard would not sort players correctly on the first turn if they conceded during the mulligan in Battlegrounds.
- Fixed an issue where the scoreboard could appear unsorted when reconnecting to a game in progress in Battlegrounds.
Arena Rotation
Starting March 4, the Arena will include cards from the following sets:
Finally I can buy goddamn Kadghar THANK YOU I LOST ALL HOPE
Isn't Galakrond's hero power similar to Toki's, but worse?
It's almost worse in every way. With Toki's you also get a refresh on the other minions.
There is one very small subtlety to Galakrond's though, and that you only get one tavern tier higher on the targeted minion. So if you're tavern tier 5, you HAVE to hit a tier 5 minion with it to make a tier 6 show up. But that also means you could turn a tier 3 into a tier 4 if you're really really trying to look for something specific.
But I think it's just going to be terrible. Toki even now isn't particularly strong.
i think youre wrong in every way
You could hero power a minion, freeze, then repeat untill it's a 6 cost.
As I said below, it's devastating to do that. It means you can't reroll at all during this process. And then what happens if the tier 6 isn't acceptable? Gold down the drain and you've probably already lost.
When you're already at tavern 4, upgrade a minion to tier 5 at the end of your turn. Then upgrade to 6 at the start of your next turn.
Only 1 freeze necessary for a tier 6 minion while in tavern 4. worked pretty good in Kripp's stream yesterday.
Yeah, I can see that working, but only in mid-late game. But remember, you lose three gold every time you do that - one to upgrade the minion, another on the freeze since you don't get a free refresh, and another next turn. If that 6 cost minion is something useless to you, you're out three gold. Plus what happens if on the last roll you do before this trick you don't have any tier 4 minions on the board? Then you can't do this.
It can potentially be useful, but also very risky. I don't think it's useless, just weak. Toki has the same potential for power, but in reality is merely a mid tier hero. Both only need to level to 5 and enjoy tier 6 minions all day long, yet it's just not enough compared to other heroes which drive others out of the game much earlier. Galakrond will very likely end up the same.
Tried Dragons around 7k, it sucks most of the time. You still get crushed by mechs/demons in almost every fight. Don't know why they didn't change Cobalt/Juggler which are the 2 most dominating units from t4 to 10-12.
Oh blizzard, thx so much. I always want to get khadgar, but I'm not an iPhone user (xiaomi fanboy here). Now I can buy it!! A lot of players was waiting for this!!
Nice BG changes too! Can't believe that I'm happy with blizzard
Daryl lost a few juicy targets for early midgame dancing.
Lot of smart changes here!
Galakrond hero is pretty much worse than Toki in every way.
Immediately get a golden Rivendare or Brann with Reno if you can hold on that far? Ridiculous.
Why is "Holy Mackerel" a Paladin card when it isn't in the game? Is this a leak that it's going to be a Paladin card in the next expansion...? Same with some of the other cards marked as class cards.
I like how Cobalt Scalebane is apparently the only dragon in the game viable enough to be a battlegrounds card.
Hey they finally unnerfed Mama Bear. Maybe Beasts won't suck now. They also recognized that Sneed's was a joke compared to Ghastcoiler. Can we unnerf lightfang next? (Or add dragon to the type list?)
They hugely kneecapped Tirion by removing a bunch of the mid range tribeless minions. Good.
And they finally added unstable ghoul to counter divine shield poisonous murlocs. Thank god.
With Galakrond you can up a minion tier, freeze it, then up again. Maybe do that even more for lulz, but that's probably not optimal. But using it with last gold + freeze? Hell yes.
That's an interesting possibility, but you'd have to do a lot of freezing and no rerolls, which means screwing your available choices for several turns.
I wonder what happens when you hit a tier 6 unit with it....probably another tier 6. You could fish for a specific tier 6 early if you sacrifice everything I guess.
Upping it two times is not really harmful. You freeze a board with 1 gold left, up a minion, and next turn up it again. It's kind of like Sindragosa.
You're using multiple gold though for potentially no payoff. If it's a minion you didn't want, you wasted what could have been THREE full refreshes, since you're forced to freeze to keep the minion so you give up the free refresh.
It could be a very costly mistake. Sindragosa you only freeze what you know you're going to take, not on a possibility.
Dragon type is added to Ligthfang, they just forgot to put it in the patch notes.
Nice. Though I feel like they didn't do enough to make a dragon build super good late game. Though I guess it's too early for those kinds of conclusions. Loving all the new cards though, much needed.
So mechs are shit now? Without taunt and divine sheld?
Mech is still the strongest mid-game tribe since Cobalt remains untouched.