The Boomsday Project, Hearthstone’s latest expansion, has been available for over a month now and the meta has started to take shape. We haven’t heard from Blizzard in a while so in the latest blog post they’ve published called In The Works, they’ve covered a lot of stuff surrounding the game.
New Paladin Hero - Sir Annoy-O
Paladin’s fourth hero has been revealed after Uther, Liadrin and Arthas. Called Sir Annoy-O, he’s a ginger haired Annoy-O-Tron mech with a big drum. There’s no way his emotes are going to be infuriating at all.
Here’s the flavour text:
“I shall build a holy warrior of gold,” she declared.
“And he shall GREET the WORLD!”
To obtain Sir Annoy-O, you need to purchase a “special deal” that will be available during the Hallow’s End event next month.
Hallow’s End
Like last year, the Hallow’s End event is back for Hearthstone. It kicks off on October 17 and the Tavern Brawl will be focused on the Headless Horseman again. Dual-class arena is coming back too, along with “a few more treats” that’ll be revealed as the event draws nearer.
New Classic Cards
Blizzard have also revealed four new cards that are going to be added to the Classic set. They’re not in the game yet - you can unpack them from Classic packs or craft them from dust next month.
Avid players may have noticed that Pilfer is simply a worse version of Hallucination. Of course, Hallucination is going to rotate out of standard at the end of the year but until then, there’s no sensible reason to run Pilfer over Hallucination in standard play.
Ranks 50-26
For new players, Blizzard has introduced a system containing ranks 50-26. This means that from now on, new players to Hearthstone will start at rank 50. Like the current 25-20 system, stars can’t be lost in that bracket and when you hit rank 25, you can never drop below that rank again. On the journey, players will earn gifts such as classic packs along the way.
Don’t worry if you’re an experienced player making a new account though - there’s an option to completely skip the new player experience and jump straight to rank 25.
Balance changes… or not
Players have been begging Blizzard to nerf the Juicy Psychmelon Druid deck in Wild and make adjustments to Giggling Inventor. Despite the pleas, Blizzard have announced they’re not making any changes yet - there isn’t even a mention of Juicy Psychmelon in the post, much to the dismay of wild players.
“There’s been an ongoing discussion within the team regarding how Wild should play,” reads the blog post. “Right now, Wild feels somewhat like Standard but with an elevated power level and a vast library of cards. Should Wild live up to its name more, where we allow really crazy and powerful combos to happen, even in the early game? Generally, it’s harder for any one strategy to be dominant in Wild since everything is so powerful and everyone has access to so many tools, but do we want those strategies to exist? We know that there are players who would prefer to have a mode that offers that kind of gameplay.
“There’s also the point to consider that the reason to have multiple modes in Hearthstone is for them to play differently, so there are downsides to trying to put the reins on Wild too much. But we also recognize that there might be decks like Naga Sea Witch that become too prevalent and simply aren’t fun to play against.”
It’s disappointing to see Blizzard are so hesitant to make any changes to one of the most broken decks in the game. There’s a few more announcements we haven’t covered in this post including a brand new welcome bundle, in-game tournaments being put on hold and upcoming esports events. You can check the full post here. If you’re looking for some solid decks to rank up with in standard, here’s our best Boomsday Project decks list from shortly after the expansion came out.
