Updates [Times in EST]

12:43 PM: enUS Launcher update for Hearthstone. We will be performing scheduled maintenance beginning on Wednesday, December 18th, at 10:00 a.m. PST and we expect the service to be available again at approximately 11:00 a.m. PST.

1:32 PM: Zeriyah has posted the Official Patch Notes!

2:04 PM: The Patch is now available on the Battle.net client for North America. If you aren't receiving it, restart your client!

2:18 PM: NA Maintenance has been extended until 12:00 PM PST.

2:37 PM: EU Maintenance has been pushed forward a couple of hours. Servers are going down at 12 AM CET.

2:44 PM: Corrected EU maintenance times.

2:53 PM: NA Maintenance has concluded. Beta Patch 4243 is now live.

7:27 PM: EU Maintenance has been extended until 2:00 AM CET.

7:53 PM: Confirmation that the patch is now available on the Battle.net client for Europe. If you aren't receiving it, restart your client!

7:56 PM: EU Maintenance has concluded. Beta Patch 4243 is now live.

Hearthstone Beta Patch 4243

A patch has been deployed to the Beta patch servers.

Updated cards are live in our database, and some of the previous card issues we had have been resolved!

4243 Card Changes

Other than Lady Jaina Proudmoore getting the nerf-stick, there weren't any other card changes.

Quote from HearthPwn Mage Ability Frost Nova's Mana Cost has been increased to 3, from 2.

Blizzard's Mana Cost has been increased to 6, from 5.

Cone of Cold's Mana Cost has been increased to 4, from 3.

4243 Bug Fixes

As Blizzard explained in the blog post earlier today, the bug which was preventing players from joining Arena matches when closing their client on the rewards screen previously, has been fixed.

Quote from Blizzard In the most recent patch, we discovered an issue where some players were unable to start a new Arena run. This particular issue is unable to be hotfixed and requires a client patch to resolve. The good news is, we’re about ready to patch Hearthstone and get those affected back to normal!



With that said, we’re not planning on too many additional patches between now and open beta, so we’ve also decided to take this opportunity to make a couple of changes to some Mage cards that utilize the Freeze mechanic.



We’ve been keeping an eye on Freeze mechanics for the past few months, and we’ve decided to make some changes to certain cards that utilize Freeze in this patch: Cone of Cold, Blizzard and Frost Nova. These cards are all having their mana costs increased by one. We understand that the Freeze mechanic can be frustrating to play against, and we feel that these changes should allow the opponent some additional time to be aggressive with their minions and well as slow the overall pacing of the control-based Mage play style while still keeping Freeze playable in many different types of decks.



As with all Expert card changes, Cone of Cold and Blizzard will both be disenchantable for their full value for two weeks starting from the day of the patch.



Thank you for continuing to test Hearthstone and giving us your feedback!

Interview With The Winner of MLG/ManaGrind NA Open #8 - Muffinsssss

Get into the head of two-time winner of the MLG/ManaGrind NA Open, Muffinsssss, by checking out this interview, conducted by TheChiv! The two discuss Jaina Proudmoore, a common topic as of late, changes in the previous patch, and some advice to help you improve your deck building. Take a look at what Muffinsssss had to say about deck building, and be sure to check out the full interview.

Quote from Muffinsssss It’s kind of hard to give simple advice to make someone better, besides practice. For deck-building, the best thing to do is to find an established deck and experiment with it. Make some changes to the deck and feel how that affects it. It’s a lot easier to digest small changes to a deck, and the more you do that the better you’ll understand how changes to a deck affect it. Do that enough with lots of different deck types and eventually you’ll start to understand some of the deeper concepts in deck building.

Read the full interview, here.

Beta Invite Status Update

No beta invites went out today!