Duels Content Update - Duels Ratings Reset, New Treasures, Balance Changes, Banned Cards & More
Blizzard just published one more article related only to Duels. These changes will go live with Patch 20.0 on Thursday 25th of March.
Quote from BlizzardThe 20.0 patch includes a big update for Duels! When the patch hits on March 25, Duels ratings for Casual and Heroic will reset, and the pool of eligible cards you can use to build your 15-card starter deck will be updated as follows:
- (NEW) Forged in the Barrens
- (NEW) Core
- The Darkmoon Races Mini-Set
- Madness at the Darkmoon Faire
- Scholomance Academy
- (NEW) Journey to Un’Goro
- One Night in Kharazan
- Whispers of the Old Gods
- Curse of Naxxramas
- Legacy (Basic/Classic)
What’s more, Forged in the Barrens cards can be found in card buckets offered between matches in Duels before the expansion unlocks on March 30!
New Passive Treasures
The following Passive Treasures can now be found between matches in a Duels run:
Duels Balance Updates
Watermarks on cards pictured below are not final.
Frost Shards
- Old: [Costs 2] Deal 1 damage. Add a 1/1 Ice Shard that Freezes to your hand.
- New: [Costs 1] Deal 1 damage. Add a 2/1 Ice Shard that Freezes to your hand.
Ice Shard
- Old: [Costs 1] Attack 1, Health 1.
- New: [Costs 2] Attack 2, Health 1.
Dark Arts
- Old: Look at up to 4 cards in your hand and discard 1. Then, draw 1 card.
- New: Look at up to 3 cards in your hand and discard 1. Then, draw 1 card.
Favored Racer
- Old: Battlecry: Cast 1 random blessing on this minion. (Improves during run)
- New: Rush. Battlecry: Cast 1 random blessing on this minion. (Improves during run)
Tempest’s Fury
- Old: Attack 2, Durability 2.
- New: Attack 2, Durability 3.
Connections
- Old: At the start of your turn, add a 1/1 Informant to your hand.
- New: At the start of your turn, add a random 1-Cost minion to your hand.
Deathstrider
- Now has the Beast tag.
Banned Cards
We’re banning several cards from Duels in 20.0 for deckbuilding specifically, and then excluding a few more from card buckets. As you may have noticed, Self-Sharpening Sword has been banned in Duels since the mode launched. In the 20.0 patch, Self-Sharpening Sword will be unbanned from Deckbuilding, will become Discoverable, and can now show up in the Group Learning bucket.
Unbanned from Deckbuilding and Card Buckets:
Banned from Deckbuilding:
- Ice Lance
- Sylvanas Windrunner
- Leeroy Jenkins
- Ice Block
- Doomguard
- Divine Favor
- Prophet Velen
- Auchenai Soulpriest
- Mind Blast
- Old Murk-Eye
- Divine Spirit
- Tour Guide
- Pen Flinger
- Lightning Bloom
- Nozdormu the Eternal
Banned from Card Buckets:
- Jungle Giants
- The Marsh Queen
- Open the Waygate
- The Last Kaleidosaur
- Awaken the Makers
- The Caverns Below
- Unite the Murlocs
- Lakkari Sacrifice
- Fire Plume's Heart
Duels General Updates
We’ve made a few miscellaneous updates to Duels outside of the balance changes listed above. You might notice we’ve updated the general game flow to offer Passive/Active Treasures, adjust Health values, and offer card buckets at new intervals throughout a Duels run. Also, Spell Schools have been added to several Signature Treasures!
- Nature – Warden's Insight, Marvelous Mycelium, Deadly Weapons 101, Chaos Storm
- Shadow – Fractured Spirits, Shadow Word: Void, Acquired Allies, Demonology 101
- Fel – Summoning Ritual, Gift of the Legion, Binding Chains
- Holy – Men at Arms, Humble Blessings
- Fire – Elemental Learning
- Arcane – Infinite Arcane
We’ve also added six new buckets of cards that will appear between matches:
- Little Bites (Hunter)
- Razerrattle (Demon Hunter)
- Hero Power (Mage)
- Divine Duty (Priest)
- Hero Power (Neutral)
- Barrens Chat (Neutral)
Lastly, we’ve updated the unlock criteria for all Signature Treasures and Hero Powers to now count duplicates in your Collection, and no longer require unique cards.
Forged in the Barrens Card List & Expansion Guide
Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated Card List.
Well, maybe with discard quest again in game it will not be trash tier, we will see
Thank god they banned Tour Guide. So strong in this mode
With such a large sample size, this statement must be true!
"Lastly, we’ve updated the unlock criteria for all Signature Treasures and Hero Powers to now count duplicates in your Collection, and no longer require unique cards."
That is the dumbest thing I have read in a while. The problem has been the hero powers that require legendaries from the specific class. That's no solution at all, wtf?
At least they banned Tour Guide, Lightning Bloom, and Pen Flinger.
The other changes also don't seem to be too bad. Un'Goro will bring a lot of new decks into the meta with these three super tempo/annoying plays being banned.
The discardlock hero power nerf is pretty much what was suggested in this forum. Good thing they seem to listen sometimes.
Last time I played, I met the same guy twice in a row. Probably not many people play it.
It's a shame. It's quite fun. It can feel really bad but can feel amazing too. Problem is... when it needed its initial boost of hype to get more people into it is when all the uproar about the rewards system was is full effect. It's never really recovered I guess. I hope they keep supporting it though. It's a perfect alternative mode for constructed. Were you playing heroic or casual? I've played it quite a few times myself but never heroic.
Welcome back old-new mage hero power and welcome back mage into tier S class again! Especially with new HP sinergies from new expansion. 2-3 damage each turn for one mana when you nearly don't loose tempo and generate hand each turn - that's super crazy strong. New freezing shards are also imo better, yea, less synergy with grand finally and less strong at the game start, but really better at endgame when you have bad draw and need to stale few turns
It's not just that.
The Un'Goro quests aren't in buckets, but as far as I understood this, you can add them to your starting deck.
So we might open the waygates again soon. And it's not like this is particularly hard to do with the sets that are in the format + Embercaster.
Mage looks extremely promising imo. I have to say, though, that these freezing shards are definitely worse than the original ones. +1 ATK is not worth +1 mana, especially if they are often just used to freeze stuff anyway. The tempo loss compared to the original version is massive.
Oh, really, looks is time to craft mage quest again :)
dead mode
*dead mode with millions games played per day https://www.pcgamer.com/hearthstone-devs-talk-core-set-classic-and-mercenaries-mode-and-why-duels-isnt-dead/
But how many games are played in the other modes?
Nice contribution. Keep it to yourself next time.
So, no nerf on druid?
Not being able to run Tour Guide in your starting deck is a fairly big setback for that deck specifically.
Only 1 card is not that great
>0 Sets rotated meaning all sets currently encouraging overpowered crap like Discard lock and DR Hunter remain.
>Add Un'goro, which pushed discard lock and gave us 'fun' cards like Cube and Devilsaur Egg for DR Hunter.
>Barely nerf either throughout the entire time Duels has been around.
>Think that discovering 1 less card to discard is a real nerf when the idea of the deck is you have a handful of cards to dump and get perks from dumping them.
>Keep all hero powers in game that counter and throw back in your opponent's face any hero power that summons a 1 health minion, thus unpickable.
Gonna be another dead season full of the same crap.
Cube was Kobolds and Catacombs.
Same year, Wrong Expansion
Discard warlock is med-low tier since last nerf, it nearly disappeared from ranked (at least at 6k+ rank where I am now ). Full demon lock with soul HP is what everybody is playing. Next nerf will make discard a thrash tier hero, I'm sure
As someone in 8k I find Zoo DH and Token Druid to be the most consistent since last patch (Occasionally Priest, Mage and Hunter) Although I don't think we have separate queues since I still see people misplay a lot of times, you just lose rating if you don't hit 8 win in a run once you get to this MMR. But yeah even though I don't play Warlock since the nerf, I think they are decent but doesn't really deserve the nerf.