Great news, everyone! Especially if you love to rant about the utter 'feel bad' moments that come with opening your expansion packs early and getting saddled with a copy of an (Epic) card that you are later guaranteed to acquire as a Golden Uncraftable on the Rewards Track - thus essentially missing out on something that'd actually be useful and not already redundant. Because I sure do, every time I've had the opportunity. It turns out that our pleas have finally been heard and just as unexpectedly addressed!
Blizzard has just posted a blog post about the regular upcoming Theorycrafting Streams happening on Twitch in a week (yes, there will be Drops), but that's something we will remind everyone about later once the time comes. What matters here is the little section of two paragraphs that stand on their own, promising the introduction of a lovely Quality of Life feature.
Quote From Blizzard Improved Redundant Card Handling
We often include specific non-disenchantable cards as part of Reward Tracks, Events, Achievements, and Shop purchases. Starting with 25.0, if you claim one of these, but already own a lower quality copy that’s disenchantable, you’ll get a popup that offers to re-roll the lower quality copy to a different card of the same rarity from that card set.
For example, Diamond Grand Magister Rommath is on the March of the Lich King Tavern Pass. If you already own Golden Rommath when you claim the Diamond, you’ll immediately get a popup offering to reroll Golden Rommath into a different March of the Lich King Golden Legendary (which, of course, respects duplicate protection). Furthermore, this feature also applies when you find a Signature card in a pack! Happy collecting!
This won't work retroactively from the sound of things (so all those former unlucky card pack rolls might stick around to tease us), but it's absolutely amazing to have going forward. There will also be all the more reason to actively pursue the collectible "25 Legendaries of a given expansion" achievements which provide one with a Diamond card option, even when you already own its craftable copy of a lesser quality. Think of it is a potential free card re-roll!
And yes, it very much comes off the back of the similar feature that's been designed for the upcoming new Signature cards. This potential to extend its usefulness further is something that Hearthstone developers have already been bringing up in various interviews and comments (so this happening isn't a total surprise).
Such an adjustment might also put an end to the brief full dust refund windows which have been taking place at the beginning of each expansion that currently forms Standard - there will no longer be much of a reason to do so, as nobody will be stuck with disenchantable copies of Legendaries they might later collect again from a Rewards Track (except non-disenchantable). Conversely, nobody will be punished for missing out on this short-lived offer, which is especially good news for people who enjoy their Private Fireside Gatherings and early pack openings. Now it just won't matter as much how or in which order you happen to open your expansion card packs. Everyone wins.
Have Some More Diamond Cards
And yes, this also sort of indirectly confirms which other card is going to be featured as a Diamond option (as well as a Signature, the new cosmetic tier) for the upcoming March of the Lich King expansion - Grand Magister Rommath. Eagle-eyed users have already spotted Lor'themar Theron in his Diamond form appearing during last week's Death Knight Showmatch streams. And before you point it out, we are aware that Lady Deathwhisper will also join such esteemed Diamond ranks, but that's only as a bonus for buying the entire Path of Arthas in Golden, or purchasable as a standalone shop product (think how Diamond Drek'Thar got handled).
Update: Well, what do you know. There might be a couple more of them headed our way, after all. This upcoming expansion does just about everything on a grander-than-before scale.
On the topic of Diamond vs Signature Grand Magister Rommath card interaction, Hearthstone Features Lead Celestalon had this to say:
Quote From Celestalon What happens if you pull the signature version after getting the diamond on the reward track? Neither are craftable. If we have the diamond can we not pull the signature from packs?You still can get Signature Rommath from packs. We figured that it was most likely that people would want to be able to get the Signature still. Some people may prefer otherwise, but we went with the decision we thought more people would prefer.
Patch 25.0 is expected to hit as early as next week on Tuesday, November 29, but we don't yet have any official confirmation on the matter. So take this with a grain of salt.
Are you as happy to find out about this precious QoL improvement as we are?
Comments
Not sure if this was mention somewhere, but after you've accepted a re-roll of your lower quality card, will a notification appear (like on the rewards tack) saying what new card you got from the re-roll? Or will it silently do it in the background and you have to go to your collection to view new cards?
I would imagine it should show us (similarly to any popup whenever a new card/copy is acquired/claimed outside of card pack opening), but I don't believe this has been specifically mentioned anywhere. If it's just silent, I'd expect a lot of people to complain about such an opaque implementation.
So basically this is the already announced re-roll feature for signature cards extended to everywhere else you might get an uncraftable card as a reward after already having opened a different version of it?
Now, when you put it *that* way...
I went back to that article from early November because I was trying to find where I might've heard something, and it looks like the tweet from @Celestalon quoted at the end says pretty much everything this does. An official blog post is nice though.
Awesome. Last time I bought the bundle and got a golden Denathrius. I felt forced to dust him (first card I've dusted in ages) and it felt really bad
Excellent news! This makes me want to open more packs on day 1.
Rommath is the diamond card that comes with the tavern pass? Nice! That will save me 1600 dust!
That being said, kinda unfortunate that its yet again a mage diamond card. As someone who plays a lot of mage i don't mind it that much, but i do feel bad for people that want a diamond card in any other class.
Not the main topic here, but...
So, it's another diamond card for mage then? Shocker! :O
Celaston's favorite class
Quick, let's act surprised!
Long overdue.