We may be seeing more hero choices in our pools when the next season of Wizard Duels begins!
Disclaimer: Datamined information is always subject to change as it has not been officially confirmed by Blizzard.
We've datamined a change to "Wizard Duels, III" in the client which changes the number of heroes that will be available for picking when you start a new run. Up until today, the maxHeroesDrafted variable, which controls how many heroes we can choose from when a run begins, was set to the usual 4. Today's update has suspiciously increased this number to 10, which is the same number of heroes that are currently available for play in Duels.
A big change up could be expected considering the Beta status of Duels.
This change seems like a no brainer, at least in the casual side of Duels. If there is a particular class you want to play right now in Casual Duels, and it doesn't appear, there is no real penalty, MMR reduction aside, for starting the run and retiring immediately to give yourself another go at getting the class you want. This issue could inflate others scores since they end up with free wins in the mode.
But Mom, I don't want to play any of these Heroes!
Changing over to allowing players to select from the full hero pool would completely counter the above problem and make the mode more accessible to players. With that said, we're not sure if the Heroic side, which uses an entry fee system, should also have the same changes. Having the small hero pool to choose from on the Heroic side can make these Duels more challenging to pull off great runs, much like the limited hero selection in Hearthstone's Arena.
Reaching Out to Blizzard
I reached out to Ates "Tabayrak" Bayrak, our usual source of Duels information from the Hearthstone team, and they were unable to confirm anything about the datamining (as expected). All we got was some awkward side-eye action, so unfortunately we'll just have to wait and see if this is going to be announced in the future or it was something that was being played around for testing with and mistakenly pushed to live.
Would you play Duels more if you could choose from all 10 heroes? Share your thoughts on the datamined information in the comments below.
Comments
I definitely will be playing more duels if this were the case, but balancing becomes a bigger issue since people can just play the most broken stuff and essentially turn the mode into constructed 2.0. But hey, I can finally more deathrattle hunter consistently.
i dont enjoy duels very much, but when i play i always try hunter and warrior with deathrattle stuff, and is annoying having to start a run and abandon it like 1 to 10 times cause the game doesnt fell like offering me one of the classes i wanna try, this wont help with valance issues (maybe even make it worse since everyone will be able to play the broken class every run, i watching at you priest) but for those who like 1-3 classes will be a welcome change
I think the mode would be better removing the initial deck construction, they could just show you 3 premade random lists and you choose from that. Would make it more relaxing than other modes.
Finally I will be able to experiment without the need to retire decks 5 times in a row.
this is exactly what i was thinking
Same here, finally allowing us to select from all 10 heroes is a welcome change and long overdue. Especially for casual mode where there are no stakes in play for F sake. I never understood why they did not allow us to play this game mode as we would like to.
Also, banning cards when deckbuilding which still show up in loot buckets (or being discoverable) is inconsistent and illogical IMO.
I am currently in the midst of having to retire 10 times already and still my desired hero is not showing up for me to select. What a total waste of my time. I normally do not complain a lot, but this horrible hero selection streak is just pissing me off at this moment.
The only reason 99% of matches aren't vs. Mind Tether Priest is because Priest doesn't get offered every time. If they make all 10 available for every run, it will be nothing but Mind Tether Priest (and some Bomb Warrior).
Its all fun and games until you reach game 4 and suddenly minions start dropping like crazy and your OTK is substantially less consistent. Besides which Ive actually been seeing priest play other stuff like dragons. Probably because like I said, mind tether is good for the first few games and get much weaker as the game progresses.
This would definitely be a downside of making all 10 classes available for every run.
Also i hoping they gonna change the heroes and hero powers soon aswell
They did mention that a big Duels update is on the way in the latest patchnotes and confirmed new Duels heroes during a Blizzconline Interview.
Please dont do that to heroic .
Because then you get just 3-4 decks people gonna play
casual yes please because i use casual to test new ideas its just easier to pick the hero you wat instead of conceede into retire
A change that is likely to bring both upsides and downsides.
Let's see if it will really happen, then I'll give my two cents.
As it should've been from the beginning. It was such an unnecessary restriction since you need to actually use your collection to start a game. And I think it would make it even more accessible if they make that initial collection only standard cards, and then offer card pools from wild expansions.
I would be very inclined to play and tinker around with Duels much more if all classes we an option.
Its nice to know that this particular issue may be resolved. Because its kinda dumb to restrict people from playing whatever classes they like in duels, since its a largely constructed format, at least in the first few games anyway.
I wouldn't be too worried about the variety we will be seeing if everyone can choose what class they want from duels. The fact is that the top end is and will always be composed of the best classes anyway and in casuals most people will just concede turn one to reroll the class dice. Either way, duels is generally less impactful than ranked, so I remain optimistic that people will occasionally play bad classes for fun if nothing else.
Here's a thought: the eye action GIFs are great.
If they really balance the heroes would be nice to be able to pick whatever hero you want to play, otherwise its going to be a priest, warlock, shaman, warrior fiesta, remaining 6 classes will not see any sort of play in heroic.
Yeah, that's the biggest downside if this becomes a thing and applies to Heroic as well. I like the idea that Casual gets to pick from the whole pool and Heroic is restricted just like Arena since its supposed to be the competitive format of Duels.