Hall of Fame - Duplicate Protection - Returning Player and Priest Changes Today
Today, Thursday March 26th, is the day for many of the announced changes from our coverage from mid-March. A short summary of what is coming at some point today:
- Several cards will go to the Hall of Fame, including 6 Priest cards.
- All the Priest changes will go live, including the introduction of the new Basic and Classic cards.
- Duplicate Protection goes live some time today, meaning even old packs will no longer give duplicate cards until you have all cards of that rarity. Be sure to wait until it is officially live before opening packs!
- New and Returning players will get new (re-)introduction missions to the game.
- New and Returning players will get a FREE DECK starting today, as well as some card packs. To see which decks you can choose from see our post from Tuesday!
- Illidan Stormrage will enter the Battlegrounds as a new Hero!
Nerf Revisions
Last week Blizzard reverted some nerfed Wild cards back to their former glory. Today's patch will have a second round of revisions included. The following are the effected cards returning to their original form.
- Dr. Boom, Mad Genius - New: Cost 7 mana.
- Giggling Inventor - New: Cost 6 mana.
- Raiding Party - New: Cost 3 mana.
- Reckless Experimenter - New: Deathrattle minions you play cost (3) less, but die at end of turn.
Hall of Fame
Every year Blizzard sends some cards to the Hall of Fame, due to those cards limiting design space, breaking Class Design goals or just generally being used so much that it's time to make room so other cards can fill that design niche to change things up in the meta.
These are those Hall of Fame cards from the Neutral cards:
Priest changes
And these are the Hall of Fame cards from the Priest cards, again, mostly moved to the Hall of Fame because of conflicts of Class Design or not leaving enough design space for new cards:
Priest gets 6 NEW cards to replace the Hall of Fame line up and 7 more cards get mana or mechanics changes to better suit the Priest class to it's intended Class Design.
The 2 Basic set cards will automatically be added to your collection, but the other 4 are Classic set cards and will need to be opened from Classic packs or crafted. With the new Duplicate Protection system getting those cards from packs won't be too hard however.
These are the 6 replacement cards:
For a full breakdown of all the Hall of Fame and Priest class changes we will direct you to our post from mid-March with all the details. You can also find them by clicking the banner below!
Duplicate Protection
Starting at some point today, Thursday the 26th of March, you will get the introduction of increased coverage of the Duplicate Protection system that we already have for Legendaries. It will now cover ALL cards -- legendary, epic, rare and common. You can not get any duplicates anymore until you have every card of that rarity in the full set.
Not only will this new measure cover all card rarities, it also covers all expansions, new and old. Including card packs you already own.
There's a caveat here: once you receive a card, you'll have it marked for "collected" purposes. So if you disenchant a card you've received, it's still considered "owned." So you can't exploit the refund system that way. There's a great benefit to this though: If you don't like a particular card or class, you can disenchant them and not have to worry about getting them in future packs. This "collected" tag lasts forever once you have collected it.
New and Returning Players
If you return to play Hearthstone again starting at some point today, Thursday March 26th, you will be greeted by a brand new re-introduction campaign. This will not only bring you back up to speed with the game, but also reward you with your own competitive deck of the class of your choice, as well as some card packs.
When you log in after returning, you will first play through 3 quick catch up missions as Illidan...back in the time when he was a Mage! After this you will receive your rewards and can go out and play the game freely.
The new catch up missions also perfectly line up with the new Demon Hunter prologue that goes live April 2nd, where you continue the story of Illidan, this time as a Demon Hunter!
There are some limitations to this new provision though. The free deck is only available to players who have not logged into Hearthstone in the past 4 months beginning on March 17, 2020. Limit one per account.
If you want to know which decks you will be able to choose from, look no further than our post from Tuesday where we have all 9 decks listed.
For more indepth information about the Year of the Phoenix and upcoming changes we will direct you to our post from mid-March with all the details. You can also find them by clicking the banner below!
Illidan enters the Battlegrounds!
- Hero Power: Wingmen
- [Passive] Start of Combat: Your left and right-most minions attack immediately.
They should replace Uther with Arthas. And replace Lick King Minion with something else. So when Arthas DKs he will be Lich King.
WE SHOULD GET DUST REFUND FROM ILLIDAN BECAUSE OF THE CHANGE!!!!!!!!
Yes, clearly the name change is one of the most significant nerfs a card has ever seen.
If i have a Velen than i will get as a replacement or it is not how it work?
You will not get Natalie directly, but you will receive 1600 dust from Velen going to the Hall of Fame.
Or 3200 if you have a golden copy.
What time is it coming online?
only blizzard knows :P
But don't open more than one test pack today. History shows that pack changes are not working in the beginnig and they need at least one patch ;)
Will we get dust for the priest cards?
Yep. When cards are hall of famed, you keep the card (which means you can still disenchant it if you'd like) and you get dust equal to the value of the card. So for legendaries, you'd get 1600 dust added to your inventory and 400 dust if you chose to then also disenchant the legendary.
Great, i logged yesterday for the first time in months :) can i get a deck still?
If i only got 2k dust, shuld I make a golden version of a hall of fame card? D:
If you can find the dust to make a golden legendary you will get a net of 1600 gold when you dust it after the refund. If you don’t have an epic ( like mountain giant ) craft that golden for 1600 dust, then you’ll get 1600 when rotation hits and be able to dust the golden epic for another 400 dust
I'm feeling like the biggest idiot right now...
It actually took me until now to realize, that the "no duplicate" protection means that you can't get duplicates, meaning, that you are only guaranteed to get ONE copy of each rarity, until you get all of them, after which you can get duplicates, which are going to be random again.
I actually thought this whole time that it'd protect you from getting a rare or epic for the third time while you are still having others only once.
No duplicates is great for legendaries, since you only need them once anyway, but for epics...
Your first assumption was correct.
if in doubt always go to the source, it's actually very bad wording in this article here on hearthpwn, look here:
https://playhearthstone.com/en-gb/blog/23319441/welcome-to-the-year-of-the-phoenix
"Once this change goes live, you will no longer receive more than two copies of any Common, Rare, or Epic until you have owned two copies of all cards of that rarity in a set. "
To be fair, the post makes it quite ambiguous.
Thanks for clearing it up for me. That's how I remembered it, but I guess after weeks of everyone just naming it the "no duplicate" rule, I got confused and now thought it literally meant duplicates.
Fixed the article to be more in line with the wording Blizzard used, for clarity.