Weekly Hearthstone Roundup #8 (Jan 27 – Feb 2)

Last month in review:

• #4 – Dec 30 2016 – Jan 5 2017
• #5 – Jan 6 – Jan 12 2017
• #6 – Jan 13 – Jan 19 2017
• #7 – Jan 20 – Jan 26 2017

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

• January 2017 season has finished. Here are the final top 200 rankings for two biggest regions: Americas, Europe.
• February 2017 season has started – This season’s card back is The Kabal.
• This week Tavern’s Brawl is The Gift Exchange! – The Christmas Brawl was postponed due to technical difficulties, but it was promised to make a comeback. After winning one game, you’re rewarded with a festive Card Back. However, it’s the same card back that we’ve got last year, so players who already own it will sadly get just a single card pack. Not making a new card back for this year’s Winterveil even is pretty disappointing.
• HearthPwn: Hearthstone China Releases Personalized Yearly Stats – Players who are on the Chinese server got a nice New Year surprise. It seems like Chinese server is really ahead from the Western ones when it comes to extra functions like that. This time around Chinese players can see their personal stats from last year, including number of days played, amount of gold earned, number of packs opened, ladder wins and much more.
• MMOs.com: Digital CCG genre booming, Hearthstone earns $395m in 2016, Shadowverse $100m – The stats aren’t official, they’re based on analyst speculations, however it’s easy to see that Hearthstone is by far the most popular digital CCG and it has A LOT of revenue.
• Mike Elliot, famous game designer on multiple card games inc. MTG worked with Blizzard on upcoming content
• Polygon: Hearthstone’s director on the state of the game, possible nerfs and more – Polygon’s Philip Kollar has interviewed Ben Brode and while there are no breaking news, we’ve learned a few interesting details. HearthPwn has prepared a summary of this interview, which you can read here.
• Reddit (Ben Brode): Defining Complexity, Depth, and ‘Design Space’ – Ben Brode took some time to write a long Reddit post, explaining the intentions behind his recent comments. In particular, he talks about what he understands by “complexity”, how is it different from “strategic depth” and tries to define the “design space”. If you’re interested in the Hearthstone card design, you should definitely read it.
• Ben Brode: The Meta, Balance, and Shaman – Ben Brode has been very vocal recently and he created a post on the official forums yesterday. He mainly talks about the Shaman and the early Pirate package, stats, representation and balance. However, when it comes to big news – there will be a balance patch by the end of February. We will get more details about a week prior, but we can be pretty sure that both Shaman and the Pirates (most likely Small-Time Buccaneer) will get addressed in some way. And that’s really good, because the current meta is one of the worst ones I’ve ever played in.

Ladder/Decks/Meta

• ViciousSyndicate: Data Reaper Report #36 was released – In short: welcome to the Shamanstone. Shaman is by far the most popular class, currently twice more popular than the second most common choice (Warrior). It’s even worse in Legend, where Shaman is THREE TIMES as popular as the second class choice (Warrior), that’s around 40% vs 13% popularity on the first/second class. The overall meta seems to be pretty stale, because it’s dominated by a single class and there is not too much room for changes. Top 8 decks on the overall ladder are: Aggro Shaman, Pirate Warrior, Dragon Warrior, Midrange Jade Shaman, RenoLock, Dragon Priest, Miracle Rogue and Control Shaman. The only drastic change this week was Control Shaman going up in terms of win rate, which is pretty surprising given how the deck is weak against other Shaman archetypes.
• TempoStorm: Meta Snapshot #22 (January 31) was released. Here is the breakdown video. Tier 1 decks: Aggro Shaman, Aggro Shaman, Reno Mage, Midrange Jade Shaman, Pirate Warrior and RenoLock. Tier 2 decks: Miracle Rogue, Control Warrior and Dragon Priest.
• MetaStats: Standard Meta Snapshot Week 4 (Jan 23 – Jan 29) was released – Top 8 most successful decks right now, according to MetaStats, are: Reno Mage (62%), Aggro Shaman (57%), Dragon Priest (56%), Midrange Shaman (56%), Jade Druid (55%), Pirate Warrior (55%), Control Warrior (54%) and Dragon Warrior (54%).
• GosuGamers: Pros share stats: Shamans omnipresent on last day of ranked – The meta game was never centered around a single class so much. Shaman had over 40% representation in the Legend ladder on the last day of the season. The number climbed even higher in the last few hours, reaching (according to vS) around 60%. But it’s not only the problem in Legend – Shaman’s representation on the overall ladder is also dangerously high – at over 30%.

eSports/Tournaments

• HearthPwn: The Trinity Series – A Hearthstone Team League Week 3 –  8 teams will compete for their share of $130,000 prize pool. This week’s matches were: Alliance vs Tempo Storm, G2 vs Cloud 9 (February 1), Virtus.Pro vs Team Liquid, Complexity vs Luminosity Gaming (February 2). Games can be watched live on the esl_hearthstone Twitch channel every Wednesday and Thursday at 10AM PST (7PM CET). VoDs are available on the same Twitch channel.
• GosuGamers: Hearthstone’s Global Games are coming and they are action-packed – More details about the Hearthstone Global Games have been unveiled. It takes a format similar to the Olympics, where players play for their respective countries. Top ranked players from each of the 48 eligible countries will compete for their share of $300,000 prize pool. The format is pretty complicated, so be sure to check out the GosuGamers summary or the official post for more details.
• GosuGamers: DreamHack expands to seven events in 2017, adds four NA locations
• GosuGamers: Four HS tournaments happened at the same time over the weekend. Here’s a summary of what went down – I wanted to do a summary myself, but GosuGamers already did one, so I’ve figured out that there is no reason to write basically the same info again. Instead, I’m linking their article, which is really nice summary.

Community/Podcasts/Videos

• New episodes of the most popular Hearthstone podcasts were released: The Angry Chicken #194, Golden Wisp #111, Value Town #106, Lightforge #78, The Innervated #72
• GosuGamers: Five questions with Chakki: “I would give up memeing to make Hearthstone good again”
• GosuGamers: Talking to casters: An interview with Noxious and Rich
• Video: [Wronchi Animation] Malfurion v Valeera: A Hearthstone Cartoon
• Video: Hearthstone – Valeera speed drawing!
• Video: Epic RNG Battle
• Video: Hearthstone 3D: Kel’Thuzad
• Video: [Hearthstone Challenges] #110 – Fatigue a Pirate Warrior!
• Video: Hearthstone: Trump’s Best Moments in January
• Reddit: Top Cards of the Week from /r/CustomHearthstone (01/28/2017)
• Reddit: A Look into Hearthstone, in 2020
• Reddit: /u/ewaller has build a site that lets you find streams on twitch based on current rank, class, and even arena wins!

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!