We've got a Duels-related hotfix this evening which aims to curb the new Shadowcasting 101 treasure by making it much harder to obtain.
The change, which is live now, moves Shadowcasting 101 over to the Pool 2 Ultra Rare side of Duels from Pool 1. This is going to make it show up less frequently as there is only a 1% chance of seeing an Ultra Rare card in the second pool, and you won't have to see this treasure early on. For those that aren't super familiar with the treasure pools, here's how they work as explained in a recent developer insights post.
Update: It turns out a post from 2020 isn't actually recent because we're in 2022 now. This post is also not completely accurate as they've changed when you get treasures. The point still stands though, the Ultra Rare Pool 2 cards are incredibly difficult to get so cya later Shadowcasting 101.
Quote From Ates Bayrak Like Dungeon Runs of the past, we split our Treasures into these two categories. To control power levels and spikes throughout a run, we further divided both Passive and Active Treasures into different pools. This allows us to better control the impact each Treasure card has.
In Pool 1, you are likely to see more simple Treasures. The goal with this pool is to offer a choice that helps the power of a deck and potentially gives an option for the player to build around, without letting power levels get too out of hand.
In Pool 2, we turn up the heat a bit. The cards you see here should be more powerful than any hard synergy in your deck, with a few exceptions. Within Pool 2, there are some Treasures in a category called Ultra Rare. Ultra Rare Treasures are the most powerful Treasures of all! Whenever you are offered a Pool 2 Treasure there is a 1% chance you will see one from the Ultra Rare pool.
We use these pools as a mechanism to help us buff or nerf a Treasure's relevance by moving it between different pools. As an example, you may remember Party Portal lost some health in a recent balance patch. At the time of that adjustment, Party Portal was in Treasure Pool 2. After looking at the card, we decided that it was a better fit if we shaved off a bit of health and instead offered it as a Pool 1 choice.
Here is when you will see Treasures for each pool.
Passives:
- Pool 1: After game 1.
- Pool 2: After game 2.
Actives:
- Pool 1: After games 3, 9, and 13.
- Pool 2: After games 7 and 11.
And here's the update to the known issues thread which mentioned the hotfix.
Quote From GnomeSayin 1/26 Hotfix:
We are in the process of rolling out a hotfix that will:
1) correct some Duels spells that were improperly treated like Battlecry effects;
2) prevent an interaction that caused some game crashes in Battlegrounds; and
3) will complete the Guff-Questline bug fix that was partially hotfixed yesterday.These three fixes are further documented above. In this hotfix, we will also move the Duels Treasure Shadowcasting 101 from Pool 1 to Pool 2 Ultra Rare.
Comments
the only Duels ive been playing is Yu Gi Oh.
now in all seriousness, good for the HS devs to immediately deal with this problem. duels in a cool mode, honestly when i fire up HS for the first time each day the the first thing i play is duels just to get warmed up while having some wacky fun
Very welcome hotfix. Have not had that much playtime after the patch but matches against 101 felt kind of brutal
Shadowcasting was insane on some scenarios. I fought a warrior using Shadow Casting and Double Legendary. Dropped a Rokkara on turn 2 and it was double rokkara's going forward each turn. At turn 5 there was no way of me stopping that board since he was getting double rokkara each turn and buffing everything that attacks 3 to 4 times
I am so glad I wasn't able to play Duels since the patch went live lol
Looks like I was spared some rather salty scenarios
Duels have become just more insane. I went with Elemental Shaman 9-0 with Shadowcasting 101 and double battlecries until I hit 3 loses in a row versus even more insane new treasure combos.
There are many more disturbing passive combos, e.g. new mage Frost passives (double damage to frozen enemies + water elemental after frost spells once per turn).
The whole "Duels" mode is genuinely imbalanced.
To be honest, why even bother having an ultra pool 2 when its clear that certain passives just end the games then and there.
But talking about shadowcasting 101, this is literally having the same impact as robes of gaudiness and to a lesser extend, meek mastery. It should ideally have died the same death as robes, simply because its just too good. The only way shadowcasting cannot just win the game is that the deck is not build for it i.e. a deck with no minions, etc. Anything with a damaging battlecry puts your opponent on a clock with nearly no counters.
Even if its only met 1% of the time, losing to something like this leaves just a bad taste in the mouth. Or at very least nerf it so the extra minion disappears from the hand at the end of the turn.
They very well may still rework the passive (they've reworked treasures in the past so it's not unheard of) to be something like "create a 1/1 copy in your hand that is removed at end of turn" or something like that.
But yea I knew from day 1 (as did many others) that this treasure was busted...