[Updated] Hearthstone Hotfix Patch 24.2.3 - Returning Battlegrounds Heroes Plus Quest and Armor Updates, Arena Balance, Bug Fixes

[Updated on September 18]

Yet another Hearthstone hotfix patch has seen its deployment lately, and by now every single update included within should be active across all game regions. There are a whole lot of detailed Battlegrounds adjustments across Armor and Quest categories, some very non-detailed touches to the current Arena balance, and a handful of bug fixes. 

Before you ask - the so called 'persisting Journal exclamation mark issue' is not something that can be corrected through such quick means, and we'll just have to suffer a little longer (until the next major client patch of version 24.4). 

Quote From Blizzard

Patch 24.2.3, a server-side hotfix patch, is currently being rolled out the to the regions. The patch includes updates to Battlegrounds and Arena, as well as a few bug fixes, as follows.

As with any server-side patches, we wouldn't have seen any download prompts. As such, the only indication of the changes already being or not being live are just player reports and one's own experiences in the game - it might take a little while before it's all being properly reflected through known data in the vein of Arena winrates. 

Need to catch up on any previous known issues and fixes which took place within this patch cycle? We had it all neatly packed together: 

• Early Known Issues and Fixes for Hearthstone’s Patch 24.2 - Battlegrounds Disconnects & Disabled Heroes, Visual Bugs
• Hearthstone Rolls Out Hotfix Patch 24.2.1 - Various Battlegrounds Quests Changes, Duels Buckets Adjusted, Bug Fixes

And with that out of the way, onto the current set of adjustments: 

Battlegrounds Updates

Just so we are on the same page, here is everything else that's relevant to the current incarnation of Hearthstone Battlegrounds:

• New Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season - Unique Rewards Track and Tavern Pass
• All Hearthstone Battlegrounds Changes and Updates for Patch 24.2 - Minions, Heroes, Quests, Monetization
• More Hearthstone Battlegrounds Updates in Patch 24.2.2 - Balance Changes for Heroes, Minions, and Quests

As far as the big hotfix news go, the Heroes benched 2 weeks ago (due to causing nasty game crashes/disconnects throughout Battlegrounds lobbies) have now made their triumphant return. And yes, you might've actually seen them start appearing again during your hero selection at the start of this week - there was a gradual rollout, with Team 5's developers testing for early errors just in case. 

Quote From Blizzard

General Updates
• Returned Bru’kan, Tavish, Sir Finley, and Master Nguyen to the hero pool.

We've also been seeing some reports of Master Nguyen not quite working correctly with Secret Sinstone Quest Reward, due to the Power of the Storm Hero Power wrongly being treated as a Discover card and eventually filling up the hand with unusable copies. Oops? 

The Sinstone's interaction with Master Nguyen (minus the unintended bug) is very interesting, because it's not always a given. Certain Heroes are not allowed to receive this particular Quest Reward, and so in order to witness what's being described here, the Power of the Storm needs to roll the right eligible Hero Power a turn before the Quest selection happens. This may or may not change in the near future:

Quote From Mitchell Loewen

So it was technically unintended (and adding hero powers to hand is absolutely a bug that is logged), but we're deciding whether Nguyen should keep access to Sinstone

Armor Tier Updates

Are you struggling to keep up with all those constant Heroes shifts between the existing Armor tiers? You are not alone! As there is currently no up-to-date list from Blizzard to show who fits where, community members have taken it upon themselves to compile one. 

If you are into min-maxing your odds, it actually matters more than you might think. Hero Armor seems to be one of the factors influencing the difficulty of any given Quest - for example it might change how much Gold you need to spend, how many Battlecry minions have to be played, or how many of them need to die before you can get your hands on the associated Quest Reward. 

Quote From Blizzard

• Silas Darkmoon, Tamsin Roame, and The Great Akazamzarak are now Armor Tier 1 (0 Armor).
• Al’Akir, Dancin’ Deryl, Lady Vashj, Lord Barov, and Jandice Barov are now Armor Tier 2 (2-5 Armor).
• Alexstrasza, Dinotamer Brann, and Skycap’n Kragg are now Armor Tier 3 (3-6 Armor).
• Cariel Roame, Kael’thas Sunstrider, Kurtrus Ashfallen, Mr. Bigglesworth, Onyxia, and Zephrys, the Great are now Armor Tier 4 (4-7 Armor).
• Guff Runetotem and Queen Azshara are now Armor Tier 5 (5-8 Armor).
• Galakrond, Infinite Toki, King Mukla, Rat King, and Sindragosa are now Armor Tier 6 (6-9 Armor).
• Captain Eudora and Lord Jaraxxus are now Armor Tier 7 (7-10 Armor).

Hearthstone Battlegrounds - Armor Tier Values

In case you need to refresh your memory on the existing armor tiers (there are 7 of them, in the ascending order from 0 Armor to 10 Armor, with some of the values overlapping between the tiers), here are the updated numbers from when the whole system has made its grand return during Voyage to the Sunken City:

Quote From Blizzard

Tier 1 (0 Armor)

Tier 2 (2-5 Armor)

Tier 3 (3-6 Armor)

Tier 4 (4-7 Armor)

Tier 5 (5-8 Armor)

Tier 6 (6-9 Armor)

Tier 7 (7-10 Armor)

The values remain as is, but of course since then we've had a lot of various balance patches and hotfixes moving a number of Heroes up and down the tiers accordingly. Even this current one, and everything else that's been linked above. Lately, not a week goes by without some Armor adjustments.

Quest and Quest Reward Updates

Once again, we've added some relevant links and images for greater clarity: 

Quote From Blizzard

Quest Baseline Adjustments:
As a reminder, these are baseline numbers that are affected by several factors in-game.

Unmask the Culprit
• Old: Lose or tie 3 combats.
• New: Lose or tie 2 combats.
Sort It All Out
• Old: Order your minions from lowest to highest Attack for 4 combats.
• New: Order your minions from lowest to highest Attack for 3 combats.
Find the Murder Weapon
• Old: Increase a friendly minion’s stats 15 times.
• New: Increase a friendly minion’s stats 17 times.
Dust for Prints
• Old: Add 17 cards to your hand.
• New: Add 18 cards to your hand.
Reenact the Murder
• Old: Have 19 friendly minions die.
• New: Have 20 friendly minions die.

Quote From Blizzard

Reward Difficulty Adjustments:
• The Smoking Gun, Staff of Origination, Tiny Henchmen, Stolen Gold, Alter Ego, and Secret Sinstone were made more difficult to earn.

Quote From Blizzard

• Ghastly Mask, The Friends Along the Way, Snicker Snacks, Anima Bribe, and Teal Tiger Sapphire were made easier to earn.

It's almost as if some of these patch notes for Battlegrounds keep repeating themselves... 

Battlegrounds Developer Insights

Even though Mitchell Loewen noted there wasn't much else to add, he still stuck around to clarify a few things: 

Quote From Mitchell Loewen

Hotfix! Don't really have much insight to add on the BGs front, mostly just a lot of balancing tweaks.

On that special 'secret' 25th Quest Reward: 

Quote From Mitchell Loewen

Did the Partner in Crime offering rate by chance go up? Or a completely coincidental uptick in reports

No change to offering rate, just a lot of luck lately (probably because people know it exists)

That one other Quest Reward that's still out of the picture due to animation length concerns:

Quote From Mitchell Loewen

Another Hidden Body should be back in 24.4

Is having to spend over 100 gold for the following Quest Reward now going to be a little too much?

Quote From Mitchell Loewen

mind to elaborate on staff of origination? seems that (good?) players rarely pick it, then nerf to 12, and now even a 2nd nerf?

Lower MMR players perform better with it, but it was still overperforming in high MMR lobbies

If I'm being totally honest, I was surprised too

But hey, not everything is as neatly connected:

Quote From Mitchell Loewen

There are several rewards whose pick rates do not really correlate with their power

We probably don't have the full picture as of yet - it's only been a few weeks with layers upon layers of added complexity; on top of very regular changes, updates, and bug fixes. 

Arena Balance 

The so called "micro-adjustments" that often aren't very micro at all. Unfortunately, the patch notes continue being very vague in this particular case: 

Quote From Blizzard

Arena Update

Several micro-adjustments were made to the draft appearance frequency to several cards to make high-performing classes weaker and lower-performing classes more powerful.

Matt London did give us just a little more to go by, and since any added context is most welcome: 

Quote From Matt London

Arena's in a really good place! Just a couple of nudges to help the lowest winrate classes.

If you've enjoyed this Arena season, let me know!

Quote From Matt London

Rogue and Shaman got the biggest nudges. Some other classes a little bit. This was a very small set of adjustments overall.

And even if that still doesn't say a whole lot, it's something. As always, we could also take a quick look at the available Arena data over at HSReplay from before this hotfix patch got properly deployed:

• Mage, Warrior, Demon Hunter and Paladin all demonstrated over 51% winrate.
• Hunter and Priest hovered around 49%. 
• Druid and Warlock waited between 46-47%. 
• And then Shaman and Rogue held the bottom two spots with only 43-45%. 

So that about correlates with the Rogue/Shaman 'draft buffs' mentioned above. All in all, aside from a handful of power outliers the game mode has indeed been in a decent place as of late. Recent Standard balance changes have also indirectly helped Arena, through nudges to outperforming cards such as Nightcloak Sanctum.

One concern remains: 

Quote From Matt London

Back in July there was a reduction of offering rates of power outlier cards like Colossals and Ysera. From patch 24.0 it seems that such a thing was reverted. (Ysera was back to 'normal' for example.) Will this reduction be back?

Do you feel like the reversion has made the game less fun?

I don't know about you, but I definitely wouldn't mind seeing fewer non-games due to huge Sire Denathrius popping out of nowhere. 

Curiously, Matt has also teased that there is something in the works that might pique the interest of former or non-Arena players: 

Quote From Matt London

And we have something coming up that is meant to do just that ;-)

Just what could it be? 

Bug Fixes and Game Improvements

Perhaps nothing major, but you might be glad to see some of these: 

Quote From Blizzard

• [Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Remornia, Living Blade could cause disconnects under certain circumstances.
• [Battlegrounds] Baby King Krush will now lose Stealth even if its Devilsaur attacks and kills its target.
• [Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where the Training Session Darkmoon Prize did not work properly with Sire Denathrius.
• [Duels] Fixed a bug that prevented the Potion of Sparking Passive Treasure effect from triggering.
• [Solo Content] Fixed a bug that prevented a Book of Mercenaries puzzle from being completed after the most recent Magister Dawngrasp balance change.

There is also at least one other persistent bug that we are aware of, backed up by multiple reports by now. With numerous players not being able to access various wings of the Solo Adventures they happen to own (and had bought with in-game gold back in the day) - the game just gets stuck on loading. Apparently the recent introduction of Runestones might be taking the blame here. So far we haven't seen an official word on the matter, but the developers must be aware. 

Book of Mercenaries, Revisited

The "Book of Mercenaries puzzle" part is the most curious entry on this list. There was a sizable Reddit thread on the topic, with people disappointed that Adventures still aren't exempt from being affected by various balance changes which might then render some challenges nigh impossible to overcome (and we already have a precedent here, with an old version of Lightning Bloom available for solo content). So this presumably means the Arcane Burst Hero Power will now also remain as it was originally designed for the PvE mode.

On a side note, it's interesting to see how many people seem to play (replay?) through these single player outings on a daily basis. What is even more interesting is the path Matt London (current Modes Design Lead for Hearthstone, and the man behind the whole Book of Mercenaries project) went down while sharing some of his thoughts on this very subject:

Quote From Matt London

I'm fixing a bug today where the final puzzle in Dawngrasp's Book of Mercenaries is rendered unbeatable due to the recent tuning change to Arcane Burst. Quite a silly bug. I definitely made a unique copy of the hero power for the mission, but hooked up the wrong one.

It's also quite humbling to not remember exactly how to beat my own puzzles. They come back quickly, but boy does a lot of stuff leave my head. […]

I know this review came about because of an oopsie, but it's actually quite humbling that it was found within hours of the patch going live, because someone was playing Book of Mercenaries at that very moment. So thank you for continuing to enjoy our family of mercenaries!

It's quite a peek behind the scenes, but at the same time it's also far more than that! The whole Twitter thread is worth a read if you'd like to find out how the greater Warcraft narrative (and that of Book of Mercenaries) incorporates themes of parents and children. Pretty fascinating insights in their own right.

Do you agree with the current Arena balance sentiments? And what's your continued experience with Battlegrounds now being full of Quests, is it all making sense yet?