Illidan, Deflect-o-Bot, and Felfin Navigator join Hearthstone Battlegrounds in Patch 17.0

Blizzard Entertainment’s 17.0 update for Hearthstone was released today. 

While the new patch includes a bunch of wonderful features, like Hall of Fame, new Duplicate Protection Rules, and the long-awaited Priest rework, Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds mode also got some updates.

To coincide with the upcoming release of Hearthstone’s 10th class, Demon Hunter, on April 2, Illidan Stormrage is a new Hero dropping into the mode with a powerful passive Hero Power. When each round begins, your left and right-most minions attack immediately, allowing you to guarantee the first strike against your opponent and enable some potentially powerful combos.

Cobalt Guardian has been removed from Battlegrounds, but a new Battlegrounds-specific card takes its place and retains his effect. Deflect-o-Bot is a three-star Mech that starts with Divine Shield, has three Attack, two Health, and gains one Attack and Divine Shield whenever you summon a Mech in combat. 

With Cobalt Guardian’s newfound absence, this Mech will serve as its substitute. While it does start off with less overall stats, with half of its Attack and two-thirds of its Health, it does scale up in strength more during combat if you can spam Mech summons through means like Replicating Menace or Harvest Golem.

In addition to this reworked Cobalt Guardian, a new Murloc named Felfin Navigator has joined the pool of minions. Felfin Navigator is a three-star Murloc with four Attack, four Health, and a Battlecry that gives your Murlocs +1/+1. This entirely new Murloc made for the mode shores up the weakness that Murlocs usually have during the mid game before they can become the Poisonous Divine Shield terror that they are in the late game.

The new patch is now live on PC and will become available later today for mobile clients.