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.
Can i now finally dust my golden Beast and now Xavius ? I wont open them again ?
No, you have to keep them if you don't want to find them again.
You will never open them again, even if you disenchant them. So go ahead!
"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."
RIP my galakrond rogue :/ It isn't what it used to be without leeroy
priest lacked the card draw now to stay in control :ccc
All we have left is Mass Dispel :(
12000 dust nice!
I've been playing my wizbang decks, and they still have the hall of fame cards in them. It was neat bringing out mountain giant after they were removed from standard!
I'm assuming it is. When I loaded up the game it had the pop-ups showing the cards nerfs/changes/etc... and had the pop-up stating the change for the duplication system. I should have taken screenshots, but I didn't think this would occur. Oh well.
You guys are not understanding this. You dont get a duplicate if you have maximum amount of copies in your collection.
„limiting design space“ lol. that basically means „screw you, wild players. we‘ll break your game mode so standard players aren‘t overwhelmed by the simple mechanics of this game.
they basically HOFed the class identity of priest.
great job (not)
Duplicate Protection did not work for my 2 Golden Classic Packs, First ones I opend after Patch and no Priest Cards (got all classic Cards)
Is the patch actually live? My Battle.net launcher shows it currently at 16.6, and loading up the game my standard priest deck (with old cards like Northshire) is still legal.
If it's not live, then duplication protection isn't in yet.
Getting terrible performance from this patch, game takes 3+ minutes to load and on my second match I crash as I'm casting lethal, of course I can't reconnect with the insane load time (connection times out anyway and I have to restard again). Send it back to testing IMO.
Btw, with the holy smite change, some of the boomsday puzzles (mirror room 2 puzzle 6 i.e.) are now impossible to complete. I Just came back, wanted to finish those and I can't so i am stuck :'( Blizz please, fix this.
But for Zeph it is a win, needed to remove 3 health minion and chose Smite. Bolt from Shaman overloaded you one.
So not sure how this new "no duplicate" system works. I own basically all of the classic set and opened 4 packs expecting to get the new Priest cards and got none? Is this a bug?
you got all cards 2x ?
RIP Leeroy Jenkins causing many concedes
Does anyone know if the "owned" flag is retroactive? A couple months back I got my final Classic legendary, and as the previous system you could still DE something and get it later, I chose to DE one of the weaker Classic legendaries, Millhouse Manastorm. Is he still in the pool for potential packs for me, or will I have to craft him to get him back?