Recently, Ates 'Tabayrak' Bayrak, Hearthstone Associate Game Designer, asked for players to give him feedback regarding Hearthstone's Duels game mode. Duels received a large content update last week including, but not limited to:
- Vanndar and Drek'thar, two new playable Heroes with exclusive Hero Powers and Signature Treasures.
- New Passive Treasures introduced.
- Card bans and Passive bans & restrictions.
- Constructed balance changes.
Additionally, the newly introduced tier 1 Passive Treasure Shadowcasting 101 (which caused all sorts of reactions when revealed on January 20th for being an obvious power outlier) received a hotfix, and it is now a tier 2 Ultra Rare Passive Treasure.
Quote From Tabayrak Duels Feedback Thread
Have thoughts on the new Duels content? We want to hear it!
With the Hotfix in the process of rolling out know that the Signature Treasure Battlecry bugs and balance for Shadowcasting 101 are already handled.
I will keep this thread open till tomorrow night.
Tabayrak is not new to this kind of feedback and, as usual, the community did answer the call, touching more than a couple of interesting themes and giving their personal opinions on the meta. The fact that most Duels players have such a positive approach towards Team 5 makes the developers want to interact more with the community, creating a virtuous circle that benefits both parts - keep going this way!
As for this article, our goal is summarizing everything relevant from said feedback thread and giving our own two cents.
General Impression
Starting off with general considerations, it appears that the community appreciated the novelties brought by patch 22.2: both the constructed nerfs and the Duels-related changes were perceived in a really positive way, as most respondants felt they were needed in some way.
For example, AgentCroque points out that now you're less likely to die from hand, something which happened more often than desired a couple weeks ago: toning down Demon Hunter in Blade of Quickening, Priest in Shadow Word: Void, Embrace the Shadow and removing Fireshaper from the Passive Pool 1 gave players a feeling of agency that kind of lacked at times before the patch.
There seems to be some power outlier people are worried about (mainly one), but the feeling is that the meta is in a good spot, with lots of room for experimentation and development. We'll talk about what players feel problematic in a dedicated section a bit below.
Jack Harris points out that, with the most recent content implementation, the power level seems to have gone a bit up, but it doesn't seem to be a necessarily bad thing: after all, Duels lives off of the "woah, what just happened?" moments.
Finally, there seem to be a lot of viable off-meta decks, which is great: more things to try out without being constantly punished makes the game mode more appealing and incentivizes players to experiments with underrepresented strategies that you wouldn't touch otherwise.
Vanndar & Drek'Thar - General Thoughts and Unlocking Requirements
As it was obvious, many players shared their opinions regarding Vanndar Stormpike and Drek'Thar, the newly introduced Heroes you can start your runs with. Just like as with any new toys, people tried to pick them as much as possible in order to explore the new deckbuilding possibilities and unlock all the Hero Powers and Signature Treasures. We'll get to this last point later, but for now let's just display gameplay-related impressions.
As we were saying, people seem to have appreciated the introduction of an unprecedented feature like Neutral Heroes: the Allied keyword grants extreme versatility, as well as gives different flavors to the same meal - good idea and even better application. Persia hits the nail in the head when they say that "New Heroes perfectly fit Duels. They don't feel out of place and are also super fun to play."
However, the unlocking requirements you need to meet in order to be able to pick Vanndar Stormpike and Drek'Thar's Hero Powers and Signature Treasures divided the playerbase. To be completely fair, unlocking requirements have always been a rather sensible topic regarding the Duels game mode: let's take a look back when things started and let's see how they changed.
As you might remember, when Duels launched almost a year and a half ago, each class' Hero Powers and Signature Treasures were locked behind rather strict collection requirements, meaning that you could not play a certain strategy unless you owned a given amount of Epics from Scholomance Academy or a Scholomance Legendary card for that class.
The requirements were eventually lightened and then removed together with the introduction of Disks of Legend on November 2nd, 2021. It's the Lord of Terror that marked a change in the unlocking requirements' policy: since then, all of them we tied to gameplay tasks rather than owning certain cards - much more F2P friendly and also way less limiting towards those who would like to get into the mode but may be disincentivized because they do not own this or that card.
Tabayrak took advantage of this feedback thread to share their thoughts on the matter, while also indirectly confirming that Vanndar Stormpike and Drek'Thar are not temporary Heroes like Diablo: they're here to stay.
Quote From Tabayrak We like progression, we think all the cards we made were pretty cool and want people to play them and feel like they are powering up their characters. These are a bit more long winded cause they are not temporary heroes.
I think it is definitely less spike friendly: if your goal is to get in and use "the best stuff" this model absolutely steps on your toes. I think at another level it also really helps the meta from getting solved quickly. So I think there are more benefits than just progression.
Let's then proceed with the community's words, represented by our own Aesan, who wrote an interesting analysis on the topic.
Quote From Aesan I wasn't a fan of previous unlocking requirements and felt they only served to gatekeep Duels from a larger population, so I'm not particularly happy to see initial Drek/Vanndar runs being so limited. I believe it greatly dampens the overall enthusiasm of playing with new things.
We can't expect all casual players to have the will and time to grind through several times and dilligently check these boxes, so I worry some of them might become discouraged before long while trying. Especially as you can go a while without even being offered the new picks.
I always feel like [unlocking requirements are] a double-edged sword. On one hand, they might create engagement for users that enjoy gradual progress. On the other, you are dealing with a fickle crowd not used to doing this kind of thing in their other modes (besides Mercs now, where reception is… lukewarm).
I'm also in that "may not like it all, but can tolerate and understand slowly ramping up towards more options" camp, but I always question whether that isn't a minority. Wouldn't want to see less patient folk say 'pass' over this.
As always, the balance point has to be found in the middle, and we're sure Team 5 will take all this feedback into account.
Another thing we'd like to point out for the future is that, if possible, unlocking requirements should not ask you to play sub-optimally. This statement may be a tad confusing, so let us explain ourselves with an example. Let's take the two Vanndar Stormpike unlockable Hero Powers and their respective requirements.
- Send in the Scout - Play 40 Deathrattle minions.
- Battle Tactics - Play 60 Neutral minions that cost 4 or more.
As you can notice, each requirement consists in what you'd normally do if you were to have that Hero Power available. While this can be considered flavorful (do something to be able to do it better later), it also soft-forces you to play sub-optimally. Let's say you want to play Send in the Scout for some Burgle Rogue shenanigans: you have to play 40 Deathrattle minions before, but why are you doing that when either Promote! and Battle Tactics do not incentivize you do to so?
We think that, if the requirements for these two Hero Powers to be unlocked were inverted, they'd be easier to get, because you'd have something that actively helps you doing what you're asked to do, instead of just filling your deck with Neutrals from the Year of the Gryphon in Casual mode. As a sidenote, I met a couple opponents that were doing this, and I just let them play out their entire deck so that they could receive more progression points, but this doesn't change the fact that playing sub-optimally makes the player feel miserable.
In the end, we think that unlocking requirements are something that have their own pros and we should get rid of them completely; however, they can be counterproductive in some situation, generating frustration instead of a feeling of progression.
Passive Treasures
Following Jack Harris' request during a feedback thread of a couple months ago (here's the summary), during patch 22.2 Team 5 improved the deterministic system that allows you to get offered more synergistic treasures for your deck.
While the system is not perfect and there are still some whiffs, we can say that the community appreciated this change: we are not at the levels of the old algorithm that guaranteed certain Passive Treasures to appear based on your deck, but runs with totally unsynergetic Passives offered will be less and less frequent - a huge improvement that makes for a better game experience.
Persia brings up an interesting point, noting that all the "doubling Passives", which mainly come from previous PvE adventures like Kobolds & Catacombs' Dungeon Run or Saviors of Uldum's Tombs of Terror, are usually problematic and should be limited in some way.
While trying to be as impartial as possible, we recognize that this is quite the interesting topic: on one hand, Battle Totem and the likes are fundamental for many decks, allowing them and many more off-meta strategies to thrive against better positioned competitors; on the other hand, doubling something that's supposed to happen only once per time is eventually going to make things messy.
In the end, we're not talking about PvE anymore: if you manage to consistently highroll against a Dungeon Run boss, well... congrats to you - but one player plays and one player is amused. When you transfer this whole scenario in a PvP environment, the "exploit" decks are always going to make someone sad/salty.
While this reasoning can be applied to basically any card, Hero Power, Signature, Active or Passive Treasure, it is true that the three you see above have an element in common.
The solution? Removing Battle Totem without replacing it with anything would be extremely detrimental for the game mode, and making it Ultra Rare would inevitably bring the feeling that you were not lucky enough while some of your opponents were, bringing away a good portion of that feeling of agency Team 5 successfully built with patch 22.2.
Therefore, introducing other Passive Treasures that synergize with the same mechanics but provide different payoffs than a simple (yet powerful) "x2". As an example, we could mention Deathly Death!, Mummy Magic and Expedited Burial for Deathrattle and Rally the Troops for Battlecry.
Active Treasures
Although they weren't talked about as much as Passives were, some players took their time to drop some feedback about Active Treasures. AgentCroque appreciates the fact that LOCUUUUSTS!!! was removed: it was often a one-card-army, that could steal games that a player didn't have any right to win - 100% agreeable take.
On the other hand, there are many Active Treasures that do not feel they belong to Duels in their current form: they're either underpowered or so fringe that, although you'd like to have fun with them, you're aware that they'd probably slow you down rather than helping you.
We see a general overhaul of Duels' Active Treasure not as a matter of "if", but rather as a matter of "when".
Class Balance
While players are satisfied with the recent round of nerfs, there are still some archetypes or cards some part of the community would like seeing a bit toned down.
Hunter
Although it's been recently nerfed, AgentCroque doesn't seem to bring themselves to like Deathrattle Hunter: the Expedited Burial shenanigans are hopefully gone, but Totem of the Dead is far from being "fair" or "tolerable", especially if you manage to stick a Deathrattle in the first few turns and then abuse it with Death Games - "very strong, one dimensional, repetitive gameplay".
The reasoning behind this complaint can be grouped together with what we said about the "Doubling Passives", to which we redirect you to.
Mage
As predicted by many, Mozaki, Master Duelist jumped in the new meta as a clear frontrunner: not only did Hero Power Mage not receive any significant nerf, but most of its contenders got significantly weakened.
It's really indicative that we've counted at least 4 different players pointing out that the class might be a little overtuned right now, and might need some kind of adjustment. On the other hand, it's not a clear outlier, so the meta settling (or new cards being added to the deckbuilding pool) might change the situation without having to resort to the nerf hammer.
If this weren't possible, Persia came up with a rather interesting (although partial) solution: increasing Infinite Arcane's cost.
Quote From Persia I can't see any other way to nerf the deck without banning a lot of cards (which would be a shame). With Rally the Troops instead of Battle Totem, Hero Power Mage remains a solid Tier 1, mainly because of the Infinite Arcane-Magister Dawngrasp interaction. Because of that, I would also increase the Signature Treasure's cost.
For those who aren't aware of how it works, if you play Infinite Arcane and then make Magister Dawngrasp recast IA again, you'll discover two cards at the beginning of each turn; on top of this, if you have Rally the Troops as Passive Treasure and you play a Battlecry, you'll add both those cards in your hand.
Fortunately, the answer Tabayrak gave is comforting, as they promised they'll look into it. As obvious, this is not a promise, but knowing that Team 5 is aware a part of the community isn't particularly fine with some shenanigans is reassuring.
Quote From Tabayrak Hero Power Mage is something I am keeping an eye on.
Priest
Although it's been hit with multiple nerfs in the recent balance patch, W.N.K mentions that they still dislike Shadow Word: Void for being extremely punishing to play against in the early game, especially if you play a deck with medium-sized minions.
While we also dislike that card with passion, we think that Mindrender Illucia has been weakened enough for us to wait a bit more before asking for even more adjustments - time will tell if we were right or wrong.
Vanndar
As you might have noticed in our last Duels Meta Report, many people are currently finding success with Big Vanndar decks, and that is mainly due to Battle Tactics shenanigans.
More than one player pointed out that Battle Tactics is currently a powerhouse and that they don't see how its performances could remarkably decrease as the meta gets more defined. We think it's too early to scream at balance changes, but we wouldn't be surprised to see people tagging Tabayrak on Twitter here and there because of this Hero Power.
On a final note, some players brought up that Vanndar seems to be very, if not too much powerful with Avenging Armaments. While we agree that this Passive Treasure has great synergy with the new hero, we think that it's just that Armaments has always been very strong, but it has always been limited to Paladin for obvious reasons, and Vanndar gets to play Paladin units. As things are right now, we do not think Avenging Armaments warrants a nerf, but we're ready to change our mind in case things will pan out differently from what we expect.
What's Next
Here are a few topics regarding features that may come in the future or suggestions about improvements that could be implemented in the already existing Duels system.
Overhaul of the Hero Selection Page
One of the topics that got brought up the most during the feedback thread is the fact that, especially when new content is released, people really want to try out the new toys, but the Hero selection page, which limits your choices at 4 picks, is getting bit by bit more inadequate when compared to the content released of the last months, during which new heroes were added to the pool.
It's not like these additions won't happen again alongside major future content releases, so it's worth taking a moment and discuss about the topic.
Logging in when new Heroes are released and not being able to pick them not only on the first run, but sometimes even in the following ones is incredibly underwhelming, as you're forced to stick with the old stuff while everyone else is having fun with the new toys.
More or less like this.
There are a few solutions to this issue, all of which have their own pros and cons:
- Removing all restrictions - the most drastic way to approach the issue, and probably not the best one. We think that having complete agency over selecting your Hero (even just in Casual) would take away more than it'd add, and it would also obnoxiously warp the meta in case someone finds out a broken deck interaction: you don't want 50% of your encounters to be the same deck over and over again.
- Implementing a "guaranteed run" tool - Ridiculous Hat suggested creating an extra pick in the selection screen that is bound to offer the new hero (or one among them, in case of Vann/Drek) for the first run after the patch goes live.
- This would also allow players to get their hands on all the Hero Power/Signature Treasures faster, given that they'll be able to complete the requirements in a shorter amount of time.
- On the other hand, the population of newly released heroes would not exponentially increase for long, as everyone will eventually "burn" their bonus offering.
- Increasing the number of picks - Simple, yet probably the one Team 5 should be looking at. 4 slots were okay with 10 heroes, given that you almost had a 50% chance to see your favorite Hero popping up in the selection screen; however now, with 13 available heroes (and many more to come in the future, probably and hopefully), the system is starting to feel a bit too short.
Passive Pool 2 Ultra Rare
Although it's not the first time we've seen this argument being brought out, syouyu_0 tweeted that, while they appreciated the swift hotfix to Shadowcasting 101, they have mixed feelings towards the concept of "Ultra Rare" Passives - in fact, they'd prefer straight up removing a Treasure rather than making it more difficult to obtain.
Some tier 2 Ultra Rare Passive Treasures.
We generally agree with this take. One thing is missing a Passive Treasure because you didn't build your deck well enough or simply because it's not 100% guaranteed to be offered (unlike in the past), but another is the feeling of having no power over how certain Passives show up and feeling powerlessly unlucky when you want to fool around with a certain strategy but, not matter how many times you try, you never manage to get there, but you queue a game and your opponent does have the missing piece you were craving for.
The only scenario in which we could see Passive Pool 2 Ultra Rare to be useful is in case some Passives turn out to be too oppressive (just like it happened this time with Shadowcasting 101 and in the past with Oops, All Spells! and Party Replacement), but even in this case one could argue that you could simply remove them, balance them and reintroduce them in a later patch.
Although I am not a very dedicated Battlegrounds player, I am aware of the fact that often times, when a Hero is completely overpowered or is just bugged, it is simply removed and added some time later.
Adopting this course of action would also be very useful in case of game-breaking bugs, as it happened prior to Alterac Valley's release with Imp-credible Trousers placing Fel Rifts on top of your deck instead of shuffling them.
Let's wreak some havoc! - A bunch of Dread Imps
Either way, this is definitely not the most pressing issue regarding Duels right now, and we'd be able to live with it, but on the other hand we feel like the community brought up an interesting point, and we'd like to hear Tabayrak's opinion on the matter.
Hero Powers and Signature Treasures General Overhaul
Just like last time, many players advocated for some buffs. In fact, there are some Hero Powers and Signature Treasures out there that have never seen any kind of play and that are definitely hurting the class they belong to, because they do not represent a viable alternative for players to try out.
We wouldn't even mind straight up replacing them with brand new ones, that could support certain archetypes that have been introduced for each class since the game mode released a long while ago. Dsorrow, in particular, asked Team 5 to consider buff so that they could at the very least "try to play with them again", instead if doing as if they didn't exist when building a starting deck. Fortunately for us, here's what Tabayrak had to say about this topic.
Quote From Tabayrak We definitely want to relook at some of the old Treasures and Hero Powers.
We have interesting takes about how certain Treasures could be improved, so if you are interested in hearing our opinion please let us know in the article's comment section.
Buckets
Not a topic we expected to be brought up, but this is exactly why these feedback thread are started to begin with.
If you're familiar with how buckets work, you'll know that each archetype has some synergistic buckets, but some decks have way more or they are "able" to make them appear more often during the mid-run selections.
There's also the "Group Learning" bucket: while sometimes it provides generally good cards or ones with slight synergy, there are times (and they are not that rare) in which it contains just vanilla minions, and you're still forced to pick it because the other two promote different strategies than the one you're interested it, resulting in diluting your run deck with stuff you'd rather do without. Persia expressed their thoughts in a way we couldn't agree with more.
Quote From Persia Trying new archetypes made me realize how buckets' quality sometimes just sucks for some decks. While Raid the Docks Warrior can easily access buckets full of good Pirates and Hero Power Mage to ones with Hero Power synergies, other archetypes hardly get what they want.
I made 4 C'Thun decks runs so far and in only 1 of them I got some C'Thun buckets. This contributes to tilt players, since you get instead proposed those buckets when you aren't a C'thun deck, for example. This induces a correlated point which I discussed today with AgentCroque.
A lot of times choosing between the 3 proposed buckets doesn't feel rewarding and/or skilled. You either have an obligated choice because you got the single synergistic bucket with your deck or you get tilted because you missed it and have chosen between Fantastic Firebird and Chillwind Yeti [editor's note: or stupid Amani Berserker!].
I think in the future a complete revamp on how buckets work will be necessary.
Quality of Life Changes
In conclusion, many players asked for a couple QoL changes we definitely agree with.
- Add a list of Active and Passive Treasures outside of the game, so that you can easily check all of them before going for a run.
- Add Duels to the main page's menu!
What do you think about the results of this feedback thread? What suggestions you would give to Team 5? Let us know in the comments below!
Comments
These unlock requirements are brutal and should be eliminated. It's a grind that just sucks the fun right out of the shiny new toys. It's frustrating for all the reasons noted: the grind, the sporadic opportunity to even select the new heroes, the sub-optimal decks required.
I'm using casual to unlock and it feelsbadman to waste so much time. It's not fun for me (or my opponent, presumably) to immediately concede my first game with an old hero just so I have the option to retire the deck and re-roll for the new heroes. Then the games aren't much fun either, as I do my best to just spam the weak deck built solely to satisfy the random requirement. Blizz, please. Please stop with this locked HP & treasure combo. At least give us all the HP choices so unlocking the treasures doesn't feel so repetitive.
so much for those problematic treasures
This is a great, comprehensive article.
I resonate with the last point made; the buckets are the worst part of Duels (and Dungeon Runs). Rather than picking what seems best, you're usually picking what seems least worst. As mentioned, I often find myself playing Pirate Warrior because that's the only deck which somewhat reliably gets buckets.
Frankly, the bucket system should be replaced with something else. It's not fun. It biases players towards meta decks. It's impossible to properly balance.
Glad you appreciated our summary - it may not seem, but it took quite some time to prepare!
It does seem! Quite so. It's a seemy seem that seems like... seemy.
All I want right now is a new set to play with. It's so stale at the minute and I wouldn't be bothered if I didnt get Van/Drek if the Scholomance heroes had some new cards for deck building 😴😴
Very extensive and informative duels article, well done.
Side note: Shadow Word: Void by itself can win games when you drop a 7+ health minion and don't have access to board clears. Blizzard needs to redesign this card coz the nerf isn't fixing the actual problem with the treasure.
You know the card is a problem when a priest can AFK for the first 3 turns and just play this one card and win the game.
That unlocking treasures and hp in duels is really testing the limits of my patience. The second hp for drekthar requires the person to play 40 spells at 3 mana or more, which is frankly disgusting. Most of the time you'd just die by turn 6 whilst only permitted to play 1 card per turn, and the minute you try to build a deck that can actually win and features a few spells that do cost 3 or more, those spells feel more like a self-inflicted handicap, like trying a 100m race on one foot.
In other words, its simply more efficient to build a deck thats 100% unable to win games but ticking requirements. Hardly a fun time to be had. Even the bs stormwind meta seems less rage inducing.
Perhaps team5 thought that since Vanndar/Drekthar would be here to stay long term it'll eventually be done with some coaxing and nose holding, but I fear that all it does is discourage me from playing these heroes at all. I dont play duels just to grind up requirements, knowing full well that my opponent is hardly ever going to do me favors. At least let us choose the damn classes, so we can build decks that can actually stand a decent chance at all.
please get someone who can hit "the button" for Arena :)
Imagine Arena getting 10% of the love Duels is getting...
I think that if Arena gave the option to play free and the option to play with gold or money that offers rewards (just like how duels is set up) there would be alot more people playing arena and alot more attention paid to it, because it IS an enjoyable format to play from time to time. It's a simple change that would drive engagement and I can't quite understand why team 5 hasn't done it yet, other than just stubborn unwillingness to alter a niche model. They are a lot smarter and more knowledgeable than me though, so there must be something I'm missing.
Big Vanndar decks seem really strong, though I have lost with it though even with scepter and crystal gem to Battle Totem + All Together Now Elemental Drek'Thar and double divine shield treasure Vanndar with perfect opener.
I feel like a lot more people would play rogue if it had a hero power that synergized with burgle/thief cards. Vanndar's "Send in the scout" hero power would be perfect because you also get deathrattle synergy.
Darn, was nothing brought up about the need to have proper rotations and seasons with card sets and characters instead of just adding more and more to a huge mismash? I want to see a new season where Scolomance professors are replaced with new characters ( and likely treasures or hero powers) we can enjoy playing at and we have a new combo of limited sets to deckbuild with for a different challenge. This is what I've expected of Duels since the start and, while I do enjoy the game mode, have been very disappointed with so far.
The original plan is still - I believe - to first have all available sets join in the party, see how that feels, then consider another route going forward. Tabayrak at least seemed open to the idea (in a tweet I recall seeing a little while ago) of having Duels rotations or more limited pool of cards in the future.
As for so many new or rotating heroes, I'm less sure whether that might happen, or when. It is a lot of work to create and balance them, so definitely a very heavy task on that scale.
True, but if it was once a year that would give them plenty of time. At the very least we could get new heros/skins to play as. I'm so tired of the scholomance teachers over and over again.
Good thoughts in the thread. My only personal bias I'd like to add is that *Hero* power mage isn't overpowered. What's overpowered is Mordresh being able to double up with Battle Totem for 20 damage aoe burst. Nothing survives that. Even if you aren't dead after that turn, there's no way anything you had on board is surviving.
The 2nd thing is Infinite Arcane. Nerfing hero power mage because Infinite Arcane has been realized as a broken treasure is also not ok. Infinite Arcane is the problem, not wildfire/pings.
I'd like to see them rework or tune Infinite Arcane. Making it cost a lot more (like 8 or so) or changing it so it's not abusable. (It says infinite arcane, not infinite cards: It should only allow you to discover arcane spells and minions with the name "arcane" in them) Discovering only arcane spells isn't horrible either. A lot of arcane spells themselves generate more resources, so I honestly feel like if they redesigned Infinite Arcane to destroy your deck and then let you discover an arcane spell, it would be a lot more balanced, considering that it makes you more or less immune to fatigue, this redesign would work out well in a lot of areas and would be a far more elegant solution than just simply increasing the mana cost and hoping that balances the deck.
For Infinite Arcana It shouldn't be limited to Arcane spells as well in my opinion. The part where It makes it broken lies with the discovery happening within your deck. If you are going to choose from the cards in your deck most likely you are going to find a good card easily. Because of this Mages doesn't even care If they have 30 cards in the remaining deck or 5 cards, they just cast It and enjoy the Discover from 3 good cards for the rest of the game without any downside. Diluting that pool would be enough for that treasure in my opinion.