The big day is finally here! We've known what to expect for a little while now, courtesy of Blizzard releasing the patch notes for the current 22.2 game update ahead of time on January 20. Since then, there's been a few small additions to the list (mainly Duels related), with either expanded or improved wording in a couple of other sections. Here's the relevant link for reference:
We'll highlight all the new lines below and discuss them briefly; as well as be ready to update this post in the unlikely case that our patched game clients show anything else not previously mentioned appearing under the Battle.net notes.
Update: It took quite a while due to various issues, but the patch should be finally available on all mobile devices!
Duels Updates
Joining the already long list of the new Heroes and shiny things are a couple more banned cards and a fairly important adjustment regarding the offerings of Pool 2 Treasures.
Quote From Blizzard [NEW] CARD POOL CHANGES
- Embrace the Shadow, Ignite, and Korrak the Bloodrager have been banned from deck construction.
We've known and rejoiced about Embrace the Shadow since our Duels news recap, but Ignite and Korrak the Bloodrager weren't nearly as expected or requested to join the Ban list. It could be potentially good for long-term health of the game mode, as both cards allowed for certain awkward strategies and 'infinite' value.
Quote From Blizzard
- [NEW] Pool 2 Treasure offerings will now be more synergistic with your deck.
Duels have had a strange relationship with Treasure offerings. It all started out pretty random, then eventually a new tech was developed for the presented options to more regularly synergize with the cards in player's deck. But the system went too far at one point, with clever folks being able to game it by including certain cards in their starting decks and increasing their odds of finding particular overpowered Treasures more often than not. And so things have become less predictable once again. Now here we are, trying this whole "more deterministic choices" angle once more.
It's just Pool 2 for the time being, as Duels desginer Tabayrak has noted that Pool 1 Treasure offerings should be a little more randomized (potentially a good thing with Shadowcasting 101 around). Hopefully nobody finds a way to bend this system to their advantage.
Lunar New Year Celebration
This one is somewhat curious, just changing the previous line about "more information next week" to the current "more information in the coming weeks":
Quote From Blizzard [Updated] Hearthstone’s annual Lunar New Year celebration is coming soon, featuring legendary quests, and more! Look for more information about the celebration in the coming weeks. In the meantime, start the celebration early with the Dancing Lion Card Back, available for free in the Shop, starting on January 25!
A potential small delay? The actual Lunar New Year of 2022 (also commonly referred to as the Chinese New Year, even though it's being celebrated in various other countries nowadays) is set to begin on February 1 as the Year of the Tiger. On a side note, the free Dancing Lion Card Back arrives as a winner of the previous competition.
We have a little more (datamined) information about the upcoming legendary questline here.
Friend List Display and More
The relevant section has been expanded to state the following:
Quote From Blizzard
- [Updated] Updated Friends List rank and mode display. Your Battlegrounds medal will always be shown while in the Battlegrounds game mode now, and your Hearthstone rank for the selected format will display when in the Hearthstone game mode. While in any other mode, the friends list will display your best rank between these modes, based on a rough calculation of relative rankings.
Looks like the other game modes are getting a little more love and entering the spotlight, so now we should be able to better tell what our friends are up to.
As for the usual vague listing:
Quote From Blizzard
- Misc. other performance improvements, bug fixes, and visual issues.
Be on the lookout for any other quality of life changes that might not've made it into the listed patch notes, and let us know should you notice something new! As Associate Test Analyst for Hearthstone Daniel Duffin was quick to point out, there is always more than we are initially aware of:
Quote From Daniel Duffin You know the crazy thing is these are just the important ones. There are always more than what makes it into the patch notes.
Mysterious Card Back Notification
This one isn't really relevant to the patch 22.2 as a whole and didn't really warrant its own article at the time as very minor news - but if you've logged to a vague card back notification during the past weekend and still haven't figured out what exactly was it all about, here is that explanation:
Quote From Blizzard This afternoon, some players received a notification that they received a Card Back that they already had.
That notification was from us sending players the Winter Veil Treat Card Back if they met the conditions mentioned in the Winter Veil blog 194, but didn’t receive the Card Back at the time.
After we sent the Card Back, we discovered that there is a bug in our Card Back notification code where instead of showing the Card Back that was granted, the notification showed the player’s favorited Card Back. We’ll be looking into that and fixing that bug in a later update.
Another issue we noticed during this process is that instead of sending the Winter Veil Treat Card Back, we accidentally granted the Winter Veil Wreath Card Back (a Card Back tied to an earlier year’s Winter Veil event).
We won’t be taking anything away to correct this. Instead, we just did another grant to add the Winter Veil Treat Card Back to the accounts of anybody who meets the criteria above.
To avoid further confusion, we did not send a second login notification using the bugged Card Back notification when we did the second grant. Both grants have already been completed for all affected players in all regions, so this issue should be resolved at this time.
Tavern Ticket
Hope you had a chance to keep a Heroic Duels run around and grab your free rewards and Tavern Ticket that we've been warning about. If not, you might still have that chance if you follow a certain tip! As long as your game client hasn't been fully updated, you get to remain within the previous patch iteration (and tend to be paired with players who are in the same position). This is especially relevant for mobile devices where big patches generally happen several hours down the line. It could still be possible to get something going there.
Enjoy the big content update of patch 22.2! Which game mode do you plan to jump into first?
Comments
Is this just me?
When I open the training grounds, it shows mercs that I don't own but have enough tokens to craft. Is this intended?
One of the bugs, I believe. Don't try to put the ones you don't have in there, I heard it could cause game crashes.
Too late already did lol.
Yeah can confirm game crashed :)
I can confirm this. The game does not like it when you try to train an unowned merc.
Looks like shadowcasting 101 is as broken as once thought. Who'd ever be able to guess it?
Its in pool 1 too, I actually thought this was in pool 2. Nevertheless, I was able to witness first hand how broken this thing actually is. Its like anything that can deal damage as a battlecry or deathrattle instantly transform this into an insane wincon on its own.
In pirate quest, they can complete this in 4 turns, despite the nerf. That's nice.
I expect team5 to nerf this within a week, because its basically robes of gaudiness all over again.
Crusty the Crustacean every turn! Hell Yea!
It does sound like it could be balance hotfix worthy to be sure, confirming all our concerns. I already saw somebody talk about chained Yoggs, and such... Can't be too fun to be on the receiving end.
Seeing reports that the patch should be finally available on all mobile devices (updated the text accordingly). Or almost all, since the Play Store for Android was still lagging behind. Aside from the night owls of the EU region, most mobile players over there might not have lasted long enough to see any new stuff today.
no multiple favourites yet :( hopefully soon though
Should the tavern ticket be available for arenas too? I didn't get one if so.
No, no, it's just for Duels this time around. Arena rotation might happen in a few weeks once they are ready to release the mini-set (but that's just my assumption).
My desktop client won't update to the latest patch. I'm still at 22.0.2 and even when I click Check for Updates in the BattleNet client, it says it's up to date! WTF is happening?
That's very strange. I had auto downloads disabled myself, but upon checking for updates the B.net client found and installed the new patch just fine. Not even restarting it helps any? I'll try to keep an eye on any similar reports.
Exiting and restarting the BattleNet client didn't work. I restarted my PC twice to finally got it to update. Jeez!
yeah but what decks do we play now!?!?
Hopefully most options for all other classes will feel better now with these nerfs and Rogues not dominating, we'll try to look into a more extensive list come tomorrow (sorry it's been slow on that front, a busy month)!
looks like the new patch screwed up the 1000 win hero portraits.
Weird thing is that they even took away my golden Warrior I just got a week ago O_O Now my win count dropped to 478 wins..
Huh. I recall Frosty mentioning recently how he reached 500 wins with Warrior and got the portrait, but the achievement was convinced it was only at 498. But that was before the patch. Your situation makes it sound like their internal tracking got temporarily messed up even more now...
Hmm, now that you mention this, this could be my case as well. I got the portrait but not the Golden Legendary core cards from the achievement itself. I thought it was bugged and hoped to claim it after the patch. Well, now it seems the win count was a mess - now the numbers match. Maybe it´s because of the Duel wins with Diablo, since it seems to only affect Warrior class? I guess I need to win 22 more games to reclaim my portrait, ah well.