Hearthstone enters Year of the Dragon: Genn, Baku and Doomguard enter Hall of Fame

This April, Genn Graymane and Baku the Mooneater will be coming out of Standard. Those who hate dealing with upgraded hero powers will soon breathe a sigh of relief.

Despite only appearing at the end of April last year in The Witchwood expansion, Blizzard announced these Legendary cards will enter the Hall of Fame a year before they actually rotate.

Since launch, Genn and Baku require you to use a deck full of odd or even cards to upgrade your hero power. When the Year of the Dragon begins in Hearthstone, they will only be used in Wild mode, while the Piloted Shredder is swinging around.

Along with Genn and Baku will be three more Classic cards entering the Hall of Fame, while Team 5 continues their mission of removing cards from the Original set. The leaves that will come out include Doomguard, Divine Favor and Naturalize. Among them, Doomguard was the most unexpected, but that could be due to the difficulty of the Blizzard team in balancing the Charge minons. Naturalize is also sidelined because Druid is not a class with cheap removal cards, while Divine Favor is always present in the super aggressive Paladins decks, allowing continuous draw against Control opponents. As usual, we will receive the full dust when we decide to dust this card after they reach the Hall of Fame.

Actually, those aren’t the only Hall of Fame cards. Due to Genn and Baku being disqualified, the cards used in combination with Odd and Even are also removed from the Standard. They are: Black Cat, Gloom, Stag, Glitter Moth and Murkspark Eel.

The biggest surprise, however, was the fact that some cards were not sent to be beheaded, including Malygos and Gadgetzan Auctioneer. Game designer Mike Donais replied: “One of the things I like about Malygos is that people are always trying to create new decks around this card. Every year, we have about 5 new Malygos decks, and most of them have a 40% win rate. People play them for a while, experimenting, tweaking until they get to 41% then surrender. But they also have a good time, and this is the perfect spot for combo decks. Malygos and Gadgetzan Auctioneer still exist, because they add a lot of archetypes. There will be a day when they will go to the Hall of Fame, but for now these two cards still have too many purposes.”

Randomly choose Card back

You can now show off a bunch of card backs you’ve collected randomly thanks to the card back ‘randomizer’ included in deck creation. Each time you enter the game, the game will choose a random card back to display. Although it is only a small change, this is a feature that many fans have requested.

Smart AI deck builder

The ‘complete my deck’ auto-matching feature is too useless right now, as they often pick super bad cards. However, it will be upgraded based on what you have added to the deck, based on what is in the collection, and most importantly, scans Blizzard’s internal data for the current meta decks in use. Which leaves to use? For example, when you have completed two-thirds of the Deathrattle Hunter deck, but are not sure how to choose the remaining cards, the new deck builder will choose the cards you currently own that other players are using and competing successfully. in rank.

Take this interesting example too: now select only one card in the deck, like Deathwing for example and press the autocomplete button, the deck builder will scan all the game data to choose the best Deathwing decks using the cards you are currently playing. yes. It sounds appealing. At the same time, it will entice old players back, who are concerned about not keeping up with the current meta.

Arena has new mode and includes golden hero

Hearthstone’s Arena mode has been fine in the last two expansions thanks to a change to the card selection system, but Blizzard is still not satisfied. To be fairer, Arena wins also count towards the 500 wins needed to get the golden hero avatar of that class, however, this scoring won’t begin until Year 1. of the Dragon comes out in April.

Year of the Dragon will also fundamentally change the way Arena operates, changing to new format Use the cards from the 6 expansions from Standard and Wild, rotated every 2 months. Note, 6 expansions will always include the latest, and expansions don’t have to be the same Year (for example, 6 expansions might include Curse of Naxxaramas and Whispers of the Old Gods).

The 6 expansion limit means you have to be skilled at knowing which cards to pick for each class. “This new Arena test is going to be fun, and if people like it then Blizzard will continue to do it,” Donais said. “One of the things that we think about a lot is: ‘What happens the second month after an expansion comes out?’ When PvE comes out, in a few weeks we will have a new arena format.”

Single-player content expansion, but no longer free

The next Hearthstone expansion will feature the biggest single-player mode ever. As confirmed, it will launch in May and use the same old system as League of Explorers and Blackrock Mountain, meaning the content will open in the following weeks. However, the mode still uses the build deck system like Monster Hunt and Dungeon Run, with a little bit of Puzzle Lab mixed.

Creative director Ben Thompson describes this as an evolution of the PvE content the Team 5 team has released so far, rather than a complete transformation. The biggest difference from the previous installments is that you start with a starting deck and hero power. Gradually, as you complete more journeys, you will unlock new hero powers (there are three power heroes in each class), as well as other starting decks to match the combo.

For example, the Paladin deck (each class in PvE will have a new hero) can use normal hero power, either unlocked to add two Silverhand Recruits to the hand, or for a Divine Shield minion. Other starting decks will have themes related to creating minions, increasing shields, and Elemental combos.

The solo content this time is also improved. The stats let you know what you’ve unlocked, and you can pause during gameplay, including in the middle of the game, and come back whenever you want. The only time you can’t continue is during server maintenance or updates.

This single-player will have 5 wings, the first wing will be free, while to get all 5 wings requires you to pay $19.99 or 700 gold. Each wing includes 8 random bosses, and has ‘surprise knots’ to change the game content.

My favorite point in this new mode is probably the non-combat encounter. They take place between boss battles, in tarverns. One side will show 4 enemy minions, while 4 minions of the table are on your side. Using tokens obtained in run, you can recruit or discover new minons for your deck, discarding cards that don’t match the ones you have.

Perhaps some will complain when PvE asks you to pay (which the early single-player games did). But in return, Blizzard will give away three card packs from the new expansion for each wing you complete, including exclusive card backs for completing normal and heroic. Completing all 5 wings will give you a golden pack (all 5 golden cards inside).

Also, once you’ve completed a wing, you’ll unlock Anomaly mode. Click the anomaly button and one of the random effects will be applied to that run. For example, an anomaly for all minions increases by +1/+1 per turn.

Esports will have a custom bundle to increase prize money

An exciting announcement includes new card bundles: when purchasing them, a portion of the funds will be used to increase the Masters Tour series prize money. It’s similar to what Valve did in The International with the Compendium (book).

The extended storyline of the season

Finally, the Hearthstone team is moving into longer stories. The three Year of the Dragon expansions will complete one story, rather than each separate standalone. How they affect the game depends on how curious you are about the game’s plot.

By PC Gamer

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