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Hearthstone Balance and Ranked Play Update Detailed

Hearthstone Balance and Ranked Play Update Detailed

It’s been a couple of months now since Blizzard’s CCG Hearthstone entered Open Beta , and its official release is appearing over the horizon, as mentioned in a recent community post on Hearthstone’s official forum. In preparation for the game’s release, Blizzard has a couple of changes to make to certain cards: Tinkmaster Overspark and Nat Pagle. Making these changes, the studio states, will ensure that the game is in a more overall balanced state before its release.

Tinkmaster Overspark has now been changed to a 3/3, upped from a 2/2, and its Battlecry reads: Transform another random minion into a 5/5 Devilsaur or a 1/1 Squirrel. Tinkmaster is explained as a card that often shrinks bigger creatures on the board, thus reducing the amount of big, fun cards on the board. Blizzard’s changes to Tinkmaster will bring the card more inline with its power and mana cost, thus allowing for more fun cards to be on the board. Tinkmaster is still anticipated to show up in certain deck builds, but this change ensures that the card will not be appearing in every high-level deck build.

The changes to Nat Pagle allow you to have a 50 percent chance of drawing an extra card at the beginning of your turn, rather than drawing a card at the end of your turn. Because the card had too much draw power, and was relatively difficult to counter in the early-game, the card was almost an expected addition for many deck builds. The changes to this card reduce its power when played, and give opposing players more time to counter it before it gives its owner potentially another card.

In addition to these balances, after hearing feedback regarding difficulties about the start of a Ranked Play season due to ranking resets, Blizzard has stated that after the next patch for Hearthstone you will receive bonus stars for each new season based on your performance in the previous season. This ensures that players who have progressed high into the ranks will be given stars relative to their skill, meaning that they won’t be put up against potentially new players who are either new to Hearthstone or new to Ranked Play. For example, a player who achieves Rank 1 or Rank 2 in any season will start at Rank 16 instead of Rank 25, the lowest rank, in the next season.

Blizzard has also stated that it plans to make very few changes to the cards when Hearthstone fully launches; the studio will not make any changes to the cards unless it is absolutely necessary.

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