Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #11 (Feb 17 – Feb 23)

Last month in review: #7 – Jan 20 – Jan 26, 2017 #8 – Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2017 #9 – Feb 3 – Feb 9, 2017 #10 – Feb 10 – Feb 16 Weekly Hearthstone Roundup is a series summarizing last week in Hearthstone. By making a compilation of the news regarding game, […]

Last month in review:

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Introduction

Weekly Hearthstone Roundup is a series summarizing last week in Hearthstone. By making a compilation of the news regarding game, teams, pro players, ladder, community etc. we try to make catching up easier for those of you who don’t follow the HS news every day.

If you feel that we’ve missed something important or that we didn’t properly cite the source, let us know in the comments and we’ll fix it right away.

General/Game News

  • Big changes are coming to the Arena – Alongside the balance patch coming out next week, a lot of changes to the Arena will be made. Most important points: Arena will be Standard, Cards rarity distribution will change (less Commons, more Rares, Epics and Legendaries), Spell offering rate will increase, Neutral Classic cards offering rate will decrease + Abyssal Enforcer and Flamestrike will both have -50% offering rate. On top of that, if you own a Golden version of a card, it will show when you play Arena.
  • Dean Alaya (IksarHS) confirmed changes to Legend MMR – Legendary matchmaking will be more “tight” right now, so you will be matched with people closer to your rank. It’s a huge change for players aiming for a high spot, because they won’t be afraid of queueing into let’s say a rank 2k player and losing tons of MMR.
  • Ben Brode and Mike Donais have hosted a live Q&A session on Twitch – They’ve answered a lot of questions, mostly about Year of the Mammoth and their design philosophy. If you want to read a detailed recap, check out my post here.
  • HearthPwn: Blue Roundup Feb 23 – Arena Change Clarifications, Card Discussion, Deck Exports – HearthPwn has made a great compilation of extra Blue Posts on top of the Q&A. We hear the answers to a few more questions, for example whether Fiery War Axe will rotate out into Hall of Fame or whether Reno Jackson will be made Classic. Yong Woo also said that he’s trying to make the deck exports happen, which would be amazing.
  • Hearthstone January 2017 Wild Ranked Play Season Rankings were released for Americas and Europe – Blizzard followed their promise to release Wild rankings too. It seems that we’re going to see them monthly now, probably closed to the beginning of the each month (just like the Standard ones).
  • So You Think You Can Cast: Hearthstone Edition 2017 Results – Few months ago, Blizzard announced contest for the best casting pair. It seems that we have the results now. Three new casting pairs will cast the Tespa Collegiate Series later this year.
  • This Week’s Tavern Brawl is: Cloneball! – You pick a class. Your deck is filled with random Legendaries (4 copies of each) and you get “Offensive Play” spells that reduce the cost of the next Legendary you play and all other copies by 3. You can only get Legendaries from your class + Neutrals, so that might be the way to choose a class. This is the second time this Brawl is happening.

Ladder/Decks/Competitive

  • ViciousSyndicate: Data Reaper Report #39 was released – While the meta is still very stale, everyone’s hoping that it will change in a week or so, with the new hotfix coming soon. But the current meta proves one thing – that even after everyone thought that it’s been figured out, there is still a chance to discover something. Aggro Rogue, a deck that wasn’t played until recently, is now very popular, especially at the higher ranks. It shapes to be 3rd or even 2nd strongest deck in the meta. We’ll see how the Small-Time Buccaneer changes affect it, though. Right now, top 8 decks on the overall ladder are: Aggro Shaman, Pirate Warrior, Dragon Warrior, Midrange Jade Shaman, Dragon Priest, Miracle Rogue, Aggro Rogue and Reno Mage. While top 8 decks in Legend are: Aggro Shaman, Pirate Warrior, Dragon Warrior, Aggro Rogue, Reno Mage, Midrange Jade Shaman, RenoLock and Control Shaman.
  • MetaStats: Standard Meta Snapshot Week 7 (Feb 13 – Feb 19) was released – Top 7 most successful decks last week, according to MetaStats, were: Midrange Shaman, Dragon Warrior, Aggro Rogue, Aggro Shaman, Pirate Warrior, Jade Druid and Dragon Priest.
  • ViciousSyndicate: How Impactful is the Pirate Package? – Another great analysis from vS team. This time they go in-depth, talking about how drawing or not drawing certain Pirates affect your win rate. You can learn how much Patches the Pirate in your hand decreases your win rate and how more likely is that you win with turn 1 Small-Time Buccaneer than without it.

eSports/Teams/Tournaments

Community/Podcasts/Videos

Closing

If there are any more news from last week we might have missed, let us know in the comments. And, once again, if you have any suggestions for this series (or for the site in general!) we’d really appreciate if you’d let us know.

Good luck on the ladder and until next time!


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