Our coverage of BlizzConline continues with the Hearthstone Deep Dive panel which we're covering live down below.
Don't forget to follow us on Twitter @OutOfCardsHS to get notified of new card reveals! You can also follow along with us on Discord.
Live Recap
- There are 10 new characters being highlighted throughout the year.
- Spell Schools - Like minion types but for spells!
- Arcane, Fel, Fire, Frost, Nature, Holy, and Shadow are the schools.
- Ranked Spells - Gain power as a match progresses. They grow in power at 5 and 10 mana.
- Wrath of Air Totem replaced with Strength Totem. A 0/2 that at the end of the turn gives a random friendly minion +1 attack.
- New Keyword: Frenzy Effects triggered the first time a minion survives damage.
Core Set
- Basic & Classic get replaced by 235 cards in the new Core Set.
- Some previously rotated cards are coming back into the Core Set to provide modern gameplay.
- 29 of the cards in the Core Set are going to be completely new.
- Everything in the Core set is completely free by leveling your classes.
- Fireball and Tirion Fordring are sticking around for the Core Set.
- Annoy-o-Tron is in the Core Set.
- Tomb Pillager is in the new Core Set.
- Menagerie Warden is in the new Core Set.
- Assassinate is getting buffed and will be in the Core Set.
- Feral Spirit, Earth Elemental, and Lightning Storm are each getting buffed.
- Core Set card reveals are happening next week.
Battlegrounds
- Year of the Gryphon is going to bring even more changes to Battlegrounds to keep it fun and thriving.
- Some of the new mercenary heroes are going to be added to Battlegrounds.
- New minion types are coming!
- In Patch 20.2, Quilboar is a Battlegrounds-exclusive minion type that is being added.
- Quilboars will generate a resource and take advantage of it. They have not finalized all the details yet.
Duels
- More heroes are being added. You will not lose progress on your current heroes.
Book of Heroes
- Stories are still being told this year.
- Valeera is up next!
Book of Mercenaries
- Like the book of heroes, we'll be getting to learn more about the stories behind characters.
- This solo content will focus on the 10 mercenary heroes being added to Hearthstone.
Hearthstone Mercenaries
- A new game mode that takes lots of different elements of other games.
- They take elements of Roguelikes and Tactical RPGs.
- Your three chosen characters have different abilities and you want to use them to create power combos against your opponents.
- You'll progress through a map - combat and other interesting things to do.
- Progression in Mercenaries is permanent. You keep the stuff you've earned.
- If you fail to complete a level, you can come back and try it again.
- It does not use your collection at all, much like Battlegrounds.
- Hearthstone is becoming a platform for different types of card games. Mercenaries is just one type of game within Hearthstone.
- A lot of the content is single-player but there are multi-player parts. They are hoping for high-skill games against other players.
- The mode has less RNG than normal Hearthstone.
- Tirion Fordring is one of the new characters being added.
- The mode releases during Phase 1 of the Year of the Gryphon.
New Forged in the Barrens Cards
New Core Set Cards
Year of the Gryphon Roadmap
Year of the Gryphon Expansion Teasers
Watch Live
You can watch BlizzConlive on the official site or the stream below.
Learn more about Forged in the Barrens
Head on over to our dedicated guide for Forged in the Barrens to learn more about the new expansion and to see all the revealed cards!
Support Out of Cards - Get Premium
Love what we're doing? Support the site for $2 a month to remove ads and get some site cosmetics! Discounts are available if you subscribe for multiple months at once!
Get Cheaper Hearthstone Packs with Amazon Coins
Learn more about how you can save money on Hearthstone packs for the new expansion with our guide on Amazon Coins!
Comments
I share that downvoting sentiment, and it's unfortunate to see. Sometimes people just aren't very forgiving of opinions that don't reflect their own or don't fit the mold.
It’s interesting that on wild reddit someone who made the exact same point as I did got hundreds of upvotes and almost a hundred constructive comments about it https://www.reddit.com/r/wildhearthstone/comments/lnteuu/spell_damage_totem_is_gone_from_the_shaman_hero/
Oh no...not odd shaman.. >.>
The fact that standard players are downvoting my posts about a wild archetype being nerfed and upvoting this sarcastic guy who implies that ppl don’t care about odd shaman implies that he is right, most ppl don’t care about it. But why downvote and respond with sarcasm and snark about a deck in a mode they don’t even play? It makes me think a lot of standard players at least on out of cards are selfish and have no empathy, of course they are going to downvote this too because there are more standard than wild players, but wow. What an eye opener for me. I used to only comment in threads that only wild people read and never had any toxic or selfish responses like this, now when I try commenting about a wild deck in a general forum I get 2 responses with the mkkay and the sarcasm. Better stick to only wild threads after this level of toxicity.
I think that might have been reading too much into it? It can be tempting to generalize at first, but hard to tell what's in people's minds and why they might react a certain way. Quite often due to getting a wrong idea. Community is more so the regulars you interact with than a random person or two who just decided to be rude or not relevant because they can. I would shrug those off when you make valid arguments; as you see they eventually find a fair reception.
Yeah you’re right the initial response was very negative especially as compared to the response the person on wild reddit got to posting the same observation so that was a bit shocking, but over time it turned out there were more positive people in the community.
I'm glad whenever that happens. It does take more time and effort to be constructive, to be sure. I think in more specialized places (forums or subreddit) there are more people who are already invested in certain subjects. While general population has such a wide scope.
But I also found out about the existence of that deck right here, so there's that. And gonna miss spell damage totem for other reasons as well.
System of a Down is a good band.
Look, a change to the game was made, and now different decks will be viable. That is just how these games work. I personally think overall this new totem will be better for the game, and if that means losing one good deck, then that's how it's gotta be.
From a strictly mechanical standpoint, the change makes sense. In a deck with little to no damaging spells, Wrath of Air Totem is useless. And in a deck like Odd shaman (or any other deck with a lot of damaging spells) Wrath of Air Totem is far and beyond the most powerful of them all. Now since all of the totems affect the your minions, Shaman's Hero Power should be much more consistent in it's utility and power level across all shaman archetypes.
It's like a wise alien once said: "The good of the many outweigh the good of the few". It is sad to see Odd Shaman get nerfed (I enjoyed that deck as well) but overall this is a positive change for shaman as a class.
Again, I agree that it is good for the game overall but the snarky and sarcastic comments are not constructive, I was trying to point out an impact that the update has on a deck that many people in wild enjoy, I did not say that was a negative change to the game overall. It seems you are employing a straw man argument by implying that I was complaining about the change or saying it was a negative change when I did not do that, I merely stated an observation that might matter to certain players. If someone does like odd shaman, then they might not realize this change affects their deck so I was trying to be nice and point it out so that maybe they can get in a few more games with the deck before it is nerfed. I don’t think all these standard players’ snark and sarcasm is useful, if you are the majority of players that don’t play wild or odd shaman just ignore my observation instead of having to put in your snarky and sarcastic comments. The comment with the observation on odd shaman was not directed at those players and them responding with sarcasm and snark basically ruined my image of the out of cards standard community.
I was a member of hearthpwn for years but never commented there because I saw so many snarky and sarcastic comments like this there. I thought out of cards did not have this but I guess I was wrong. I do have to say I highly apprecitate the wild community specifically here, I am on out of cards for about a year and I never saw a single comment like that on a wild thread. It’s not that bad in the grand scheme of things, but I don’t want to post neutral observations like “odd shaman is worse without air totem” and then have multiple snarky and sarcastic responses from people who don’t even play that deck.
I’m looking for constructive discussions, for example if someone disagreed and made a logical argument for how odd shaman could remain competitive without the spell damage totem I would be open minded and read it with joy. But the 2 comments I got with the snark and sarcasm are not constructive at all.
So you do not have a problem with Odd shaman being changed, what you have a problem with is people not taking that change seriously. Am I understanding you correctly?
I get that "snarky and sarcastic" comments can be frustrating, but you have to understand that odd shaman is a very obscure deck. You keep mentioning that it is the best deck shaman has currently, but that isn't saying much considering the prominence of the class overall. Just face it, people aren't upset about seeing the deck go.
If you'll look at your original post, you will notice that the current score is 0 meaning that people aren't hating on your original point about Odd Shaman being nerfed. All of the downvotes are on your responses to other peoples posts. People are downvoting you because you yourself come across as passive-agressive and "snarky". They are simply making jokes and there is no need to get offended.
It became positive recently. It was at a high negative for quite a while. I am not offended but I expected better from out of cards ppl than this after seeing tons of sarcasm and snark on hearthpwn, I started off with a neutral comment, they responded with snark and sarcasm, and then yes I became aggressively, not passively disappointed in the community and of course the community doesn’t like me saying that so they downvote all posts referring to that. I don’t want them to take it seriously or not, I just want them to ignore it if they don’t care about it instead of doing those types of comments. Not all online forums have this kind of thing, maybe you think it’s normal but I don’t want to be part of that sort of community and I know of at least 4 other forums for completely different games with high traffic and amount of posts and comments each day that almost always only have constructive comments with ppl trying to help each other. It’s a cliche but if you don’t have a nice thing to say don’t say it.
Nothing here was toxic. Odd shaman does sound like a meme that's why people made fun. I understand you're sad that one of your favorite decks is nerfed. Sweeping changes in standard can have unintended consequences in wild. It's worse when cards become over powered and oppressive like naga sea witch. When decks are nerfed they can and will be replaced by others, there will never be a power vacuum. But overall I think the balancing priority should be for standard.
It was not a meme, it was the strongest shaman deck in wild, and plenty of people reached legend with it. This is what I don’t like, if you don’t know about wild just ignore posts about it, what is the point of the post sarcastically saying oh no not odd shaman other than just to make wild players feel bad? It doesn’t seem like a nice thing to do. I wasn’t claiming in the original post that blizzard shouldn’t remove the air totem, I was just saying an observation about a wild deck. It’s not even my personal favorite deck but I think it’s an interesting fact and the audience for that comment was supposed to be wild players. Standard players should ignore posts about wild that clearly do not say anything about standard, there is nothing constructive about sarcastically rubbing it in to wild players that a wild deck is getting nerfed due to standard considerations. It’s true that blizzard should focus on standard with balancing for standard but the replies I got from standard players are not constructive.
How about we wait for more information or metrics before doomsaying archetypes? Mmkay?
Did you ever play odd shaman in wild? Please be honest. The whole archetype is based on stacking spell damage totems and high burst from spells using all the spell damage you stacked. A main card you mulligan for that gives the archetype power is Arcane Watcher, and without the spell damage totem you cannot activate it consistently anymore. When you play odd shaman to choose a totem to summon, most of the time you are choosing the spell damage totem. So if you actually played odd shaman you would realize how big of a nerf this is to the archetype. By the way saying mmkay sounds snarky and not nice, I try to be nice on this forum even if I disagree with someone and I don’t think that language is helpful.
*rework. It's not a flat out nerf.
You’re right, it’s not a nerf. I changed it to say change. From the perspective of odd shaman specifically it is a nerf though.
oh, so now we got spell tribes aswell ?
That was one of my expansion ideas before we all were in pwn but i had imagined it like class specializations; for example Balance Druid.
But i really liked it this way. So, I wonder we will get all of them or those will be spared to whole year. Also I wonder how they will tribe combat related spells like Execute. Physical maybe ?
And I liked how Spell Damage also affected from it. Nature Spell Damage or Shadow Spell Damage seems cool and opens some space for deckbuilding.
Other than that, I'm happy to see a real Warcraft related expansion and expecting better direction with new core set stuff.
I'm happy with what I saw today.
Does anyone know if old spells will be updated to include tribe?