Well this sucks… Hearthstone is REMOVING Duels PERMANENTLY 

"Oh, they're discontinuing Twist, right? Or Mercenaries?" "Nope. Duels." "...You mean the only mode I bothered to play?" "Yep." "Fuck."

The BIGGEST mistake Blizzard made for these modes was not making all the old expansion packs cheaper. More people would have played for sure. They also would benefit from wild catch-up packs. It's too little too late.

So, they are removing duels, but not mercenaries?

Bye Blizzard. this is the only mode i really play.

For me, duels are the only motivation in Hearthstone. If they delete the mod I will quit the game after 8 years. 😢 Duels is like a cool sandbox mod for me, it's so much fun and offers endless possibilities for tactics. It's sad to see that they are so unhappy with this great mod. Rest in peace. Hearthstone😢

Part of the duels community here. Im pissed. I accepted it was unpopular, and as such, we only had very occasional balance updates, which is fine. But removing the mode they were already spending no effort on?

Biggest thing that detracted me from duels was not only the focus on wild decks, but they never EVER updated the main heroes of the mode. All the professors were from scholomance and had hero powers and treasures around the time of darkmoon faire's introduction. They kinda tried it again at alterac with vandar and drekthar, but it was only two heroes to pick from, wouldn't it have been cool to replace them all with like all the murder suspects from nathria? It's hard to get excited with the league of explorers coming in if they're in the same pool as all the professors i'm sick of seeing with their same hero powers and treasures that get no new support

Duels deserved better! Blizzards strategy of: pushing out the new mode > milking money from players > not giving good updates for it > letting it die because it didn’t meet their expectations. Not that they could do something about it like: do better marketing for it and overall HS things, making older packs cheaper, frequent updates etc. At this point new modes will have very hard starting points if they ever announce another one.

I haven't played duels in forever because it seemed like everyone just played the same 3-4 broken meta decks and that was it. I like to try home made decks or off meta stuff but hardly anything could hang with the highly tuned meta decks. But its still sad to see it fade away because it was so cool when it first came out.

The only problem with duels is how stingy they have been with wild packs of cards. If you haven't been playing since the beginning you just aren't going to have a huge variety of starting deck choices. That is actually a bummer, Duels is fun.

Duels is honestly the only content that I enjoy playing or watching anymore. This sucks, no other way to say it

Blizzard seems to have a strong policy against fun. They have a tendency to not support games/systems that have potential and letting them fall to shit.

i think they won't delete mercenaries because they sold items that only work in mercenaries. with duels, any cards you own are still viable in other modes. they've sold twist sets so i think they won't cut it. they may banish it to 'modes'' one day.

Don't forget that not only have Mercs and now Duels fallen to the wayside: Classic was also removed. Twist seemed like it was going to be an upgrade to it (or moreso a sidegrade) but it really hasn't panned out that way with all the new cards being pumped into it. At this point with how much active support it needs, the removal of twist is more of a "when" than an "if".

Duels was the only thing keeping me playing this game, the monthly ritual was to get ranked rewards and then spend all my time on duels

Wow. Duels is my favorite mode of the game currently. It's not especially balanced at times, but why the hell would they kill it completely. It seems indicative that they don't have the resources for a team to handle it. Which is sad.

After playing hearthstone since beta, this is probably the nail in the coffin for me. Has been the only thing I've really played since Barrens and is generally how I completed every expansion since without spending a fortune Goodbye Hearthstone 😔

This might actually kill my passion for Hearthstone. The only reason I played HS daily is because of Duels, now I don't know what to play there anymore

Wow. This is the most melancholy we’ve seen you in a while Zeddy. This really hits home hard. I played soooo much duels when it first came out. I’ve also returned to it every single expansion. I used to be a huge dungeon run fan, so duels coming along was such a massive thing for me. So I’m so sad it’s coming to an end 😭

I didn't know about Firestone's stats showing how low Duels was. I really like Duels and play it almost exclusively. I play some BGs on occasion and standard when I can stand it. I kept waiting for news that they were going to do some updates and changes and make it fresh and new but I certainly wasn't expecting this. This is really surprising to me...

If there is any chance to leave the mode, even without giving it updates, I wished they would do so

I might end up deleting hearthstone if Duels is done. That is literally the reason why I play this still. I basically play regular hearthstoen purly so that I can make new fun decks in duels, so I guess RIP hearthstone

The biggest problem with Duels was that it was so heavily reliant on the card collection. Battlegrounds is insanely popular because you don't need a prior collection to play it. If Duels had something like draft decks where you can play with a starter deck instead of needing to build one yourself, it would be amazing.

I didn't play duels, but it was fun when i played it. They shouldn't remove it, just monetize it better

Never got out of beta 😔

Guess im finally done with hearthstone i haven't played anything but duels on hearthstone in the last year it's the only thing keeping me

I only play HS for Duels 😢, now no reason to play anymore i guess...or is Arena fun to pick up? That felt boring in tje past due to same cards all the time

To translate “duels wasn’t making us any money so we don’t want to put effort towards it anymore”

Duels is almost the only thing I play nowadays. It's so fun getting all the right passives/cards to get a crazy combo or interaction off that you can't get in wild or standard and that is what keeps me playing. Really really sad to see this.

I think the reason that duels is removed instead of Mercs or twist is that those moments have dedicated content (Packs) that if they were removed would open them to a potential lawsuit.

The only thing that kept me logging in daily to hearthstone was duels, sad.

Instead of making them better, they just straight up remove mods. Good job...

I've played duels since it launched. I would craft decks and play heroic runs all the time. It gave me something that no other mode could. so april will be the time I quit hearthstone. this is just depressing.

Even thought duels was a bit unbalanced (fault of the devs) it was a very fun to play hearthstone and you couls play some decks you couldn't play in standard Im actually pissed they did this, duels was very fun

Completely agree with you. The least thing they could do is just leave the mode in there as is, but removing it completely from the client is a really dumb move. Maybe we should all start playing Duels to crank up the numbers for the last few months it has to live.

Speaking of Update issues in other modes....I've noticed that when you try fighting The Lich King in single player using Illadin the game automatically exits, but no similar issue occurs if you use your own Lich King.... wonder if that might be one of those SNAFUs they mean

Hs devs further showing their incompetence or trying to see just how much they can get away with without fan backlash. Considering how much they got away with the past year, probably a mix of both. It’s a damn shame, really.

Happy 10th anniversary HS! Do not invest in this game anymore. It's too risky.

Zeddy, you're three months early for April Fools...because this is a joke, right?

I was loving that mode for farming packs and op strange and funny decks /combos😢😢😢😢

Wait really I play way more duels than any other mode. What the fuck

Duels to me is what revived hearthstone and kept me coming back…Standard gets SO DULL. Duels feels like something fresh where you can really get creative and play with duel class combinations. Why would they take this? I genuinely feel if duels is gone forever I will probably stop playing hearthstone

This news feels bad not just letting the mode stay without updates.

I love Duels and play it pretty much daily (Duels makes up for 80% of all modes that I play in HS). I am VERY surprised by the low number of players honestly because as I have already mentioned I play Duels all the time and I always find games nearly instantly or within a few seconds; its nothing like Twist where it takes forever to find a match. I am very upset because I crafted A LOT of cards for Duels and I bought pretty much every single expension and mini-set specificly for Duels and NOT standard. It's heart breaking... I'll probably quit playing HS once they shut it down unless they fix up arena and get REALLY creative with it. In current state Arena is unplayable for me, I always get crappy decks and go up against what feels like meta decks (most of my Arena run end in 0 wins 50% of the time and 1-2 win the other 50%); with Duels I always at a minimum get a few wins and about 1 out of 15-20 games even get to 12 wins (most games average out around 4-6 wins). Anyways, very VERY sad about this news; I've played Hearthstone for around 4 years now and I can honestly say HS is the most playedf game EVER (1000+ hours) and I have a Switch, PS5 and a high end gaming PC but nothing had its hooks in me like HS Duels did. I'm devastated... but at least I wont be wasting anymore money on new expensions and mini-sets but I'd like too, if they kept Duels around (even if not updated like Merceneries).

Wow, this sucks. This is literally the mode I play the most and do most of my achievement hunting in. I hate this.

Duels is the only content besides battle grounds I actively play in. The variety and sometimes nail biting wins is so exhilarating that it breaks my heart hearing it’s being put to the chopping block.

Duels has been of my favourite modes and my biggest reason for even sticking do the game. :(

So sad to see this mode leave. I loved this mode from the get go and was the only mode I played for a long time. I have spent so much time and money just to get the cards needed for duels but I guess that is not a reason to keep it around like mercs. They also say we have until april to play it but heroic duels is not playable atm due to some glitch.

Fuuuuuuuck!! Damn, the only reason I kept any cards not in standard

Wow. I stopped playing hearthstone because my favorite mode duels was getting stale and not getting any new content. I would have probably played again if they had updated it but I guess it’s gone now. Makes me feel bad, probably won’t come back ever now.

Duels could have been great but the hero selection with their hero powers and treasures was all over the place leading to some classes only have one viable archetype. Along with the blotting of the card pull ment that meta grew steel, i like the mode too but with everything done to the mode it will probably be best to put it out of its misery. Also less free resources at the end of a duels season, can you imagine if they killed it because of that.

Damn... duels was my fav mode, I loved playing for achievements or trying wacky stuff that wouldnt work on ranked. It also helped me with 500 wind on dk! Will be missed a lot

Final straw for me. This was my main game mode and most of my dust was spent keeping up with duels strategies. I never thought the day would come where I enjoy yugioh more than Hearthstone.

Any word of what will happen to Duels-related achievements? i.e. Will prior achievements still show on one's account?

Duels is the only reason I even play HS. It is insanely P2W but I recently disenchanted my entire card collection just to make ONE meta duels deck and now it's being removed. Nice.

Most of cards I crafted was for Duels

Yea, it really sucks. When I open HS and daily quest pop up to play certain classes first thing that comes to mind is what combo deck I can play in duels. I recently started playing Merc again and can say its "fun", it doesn't require a lot of time to invest ever day to do daily quests maybe 30-40 min.

Well, they have no more excuses for not making another dungeon run style solo adventure...

Duels has been my favorite game mode in hearthstone since I came back in 2022. I feel like since I started playing they didn't really add any content to it. I know that they added the Death Knight classes since then and they added Darius (which saw about 3 months of total viability in its entire run). Aside from adding those classes, no new passives were added, all the cool ones tend to be niche, lots of signature treasures seem like they're worse than normal cards (wand of dueling, ol' faithful, Reno's Hat and Lasso, that one warrior one for amalgam decks). The problem overall was that there was just content removed and viable decks constantly getting removed so the power just slowly went down over time. There was a certain period I remember which was a bit after Nathria released where there were a bunch of good and cool decks. Not really any class was entirely unviable. Unfortunately, one deck was too strong and would otk you consistently turns 1-3. It was enabled by a passive that reduced spells by 2 but overloaded each spell by 1. The solution for this should have been to make it a tier two passive as it would have made the early otk impossible but keep a high-risk high-reward card available for the future. Instead, they just removed the passive entirely. Following this, many cool passives got removed or turned into "Ultra-Rares" meaning they never saw play in any optimized decks. I think duels would have been a great game mode if they just didn't constantly remove cool cards.

I woke up 1 hr late to 200 multiple choices ques test.Gave that in 50 minutes.I return home to find this crab.Its a really bad start the day

Well, it was only a matter of time until they removed it. And the reason they couldn't keep it in the gane like they did with Merecenaries is because it uses new cards and they would have to balance it while Mercenaries is just another Solo Adventure where nothing ever changes.

thats just actually pathetic theres no other way to put it. turns out banning a card every 6 months after it made duels impossible to play is too high maintenance. they got their hands full pushing half a patch every 2 years after all. All while being incredibly expensive to play aswell. just spitting in our face and we take it ig

That's irritating... I often use duels to complete one of the weekly quests when it comes up, especially when heroic brawliseum is the current brawl. Not all brawls are worth playing, and battlegrounds takes too long.

That sucks bad. II was just getting in to Duels again. Taking a break off to play Tombs of Terror (solo duels). I will miss it. Was a nice break from ladder.

This is really... REALLY sucks. I started playing a few days ago and I was having a lot of fun, the only other mode I play is the free mode but lately I only play against the same decks over and over and it gets a bit frustrating

Duels is pretty much all I play anymore, what the heck is this?

I really enjoy duels and always drift to it near the end of expansions. Strange move by blizzard.

It’s my favourite alternate mode :(

Mannnnnnnnnn i only played Duells and it was the only thing keeping me from deinstalling :(

Duels has been on its way out for a while now, given their balance changes and lack of overall freshness (OG classes still have their original hero powers... Some of which are very specific like the Warlock one that revolves around Soul Fragments which is a singular expansion mechanic) I'm hopeful that the removal of Duels means Dungeon Runs become a thing again, since DR's stopped when Duels came out since it was the "New Dungeon Run content" but maybe I'm unduely optimistic. On a side note, I really hope they let us obtain the Duels portraits, at least for the 10 OG classes (DK ones have been used as Scamesium "Rewards" and the multi-class ones could be confusing). I'd always hoped that you'd get them as a reward for going 12 wins with the class or something. But if Duels is being removed, that won't be possible. But it would still be nice to get those portraits.

Sad to see, but good for me, the only reason I was still spending money on hearthstone was this mode

I always liked the mode, but I rarely played it. I had a feeling this would happen, but not in April.

I had crafted some cards for Duels, I was playing it every new expansion and I thought it was really fun. Also was amazing seeing Roffle play through it. Killing even a maintenance mode is absolutely heartbreaking.

I love duels, one of my favorite modes and I have crafted quite a few cards for this. So sad they are removing it.

I'm still playing hs JUST for duels, I guess April will be my las month

Wait the mode thats still in beta is being removed?

I’ve played only when there were some tasks about duels. I didn’t like that mode, since it required old cards from Wild, which I’m still lacking. I’m a F2P player with 99% of standard cards, but lacking the majority of wild. The same reason about Twist. And the same destiny happened with that mode too. Coincidence? No! They could have diecounted the Twist and Wild cards. Craft leg 400dust and the same for disenchantment. Thus it could be more affordable

Poor Roffle...😢

If the achievements are left in the game unachievable, as a completionist they will lose my business for this game forever

Wow…… and to think only a couple of months ago things were looking up for Hearthstone and now it seems like they don’t even want the game to survive anymore😢

I'd like to know how the game codes acctually work, since it seems like changing a card is the hardest thing ever know to men. I mean, is it a huge set of code interactiins that needs to be changed or is it just a few strings to change that no one at Blizzard cares to touch? For example, if i wanted to change, lets say.. Shudderwock, how difficult would it be to add to the battlecry the restriction "once per game" ?

What can we do to protest agains this? I actually play almost nothing but Duels. Ranked sucks so hard that I just play it to gain the experience points each week. It sucks because the system is useless: I know that even at Bronze 10 I play vs Platin ranked players just because my MMR is that high. Again and again the same boring decks in wild...

I enjoy all the options to play different modes. This is the second one to go by the way side, plus twist was a bust. Really bummed about it!

Mercenaries is likely next on the chopping block. But I have hope for a rework for the mode, it has so much potential as a Slay the Spire-esque experience.

You had a late video and it's Thursday, so I assumed patch notes but man....this sucks. So many unspent tavern tickets

That's a shame. Duels was probably my favorite mode when I've needed a change of pace.

Sad to see However if I'm honest I didn't play it since Roffle have been playing the mode. Thanks for the video Zeddy!

Poor Roffle man, can't catch a break

Woooooooow. Well there goes a vast majority of the enthusiasm I have for still playing Hearthstone.

I still have an unfinished run that I started about half a year ago, and I am still waiting for them to refund me the tavern ticket. 😢

Hey Zeddie. Your video only showed up only now after almost a year even though I've been subscribed. I quit heartstone since 'dust gate' when they set me to 0 dust so i also stopped watching hs content creators on both yt and twitch and honestly, life has been better. Been spending my time after work in the gym instead of on hearthstone. I miss your rants thought haha. If I still played, I'd be outraged that a whole game mode is being deleted. Also wasn't mercenaries just a money grab in the first place? Now that i remember you exist (even though ive been subscribed this entire time and not seeing your videos on recommended), I might go watch some older vids to see what HS has been like. I don't plan to come back to the game though. Bought all expansions for guild wars 2 and I play that on weekends instead of hs. Anyway keep up the quality content and I hope to see another vid of yours soon .Thumbs up on the vid. ps. I don't believe in the bell :(

I loved duels when it came out. By the time forged in the Barrens came out and we still had the Wizard Duels heroes instead of the new Mercenaries, I already felt like the mode was starting to run on life support.

Exactly right. How can anyone reward this bullshit with monetary support when they just keep deleting new modes? I was genuinely excited for the 10th anniversary of Hearthstone, and then shit like this happens. O remember when they first gutted the bucket system of Duels, that was some bs. Why even bother investing?

This might be what makes me stop spending any money on Hearthstone. They keep screwing over every mode and then wondering why those modes do badly. Like, do the devs even have brains??

I feel like they could make duels more popular again if they brought back the themed loot pools instead of the expansion themed loot pools i used to be a duels player until they made that change cus it just annoys tf out of you

I haven't played Duels much lately, but I have played it a lot over the years. It is a nice change of pace. This news sucks!

The main reason I bought the Darkmoon fair pre-order was coz it had early access to Duels and I'm so sad to see the mode get completely removed from the client :( why couldn't they just stop adding new changes and just send out an announcement that the mode would be in maintenance mode like Mercenaries.

Sigh, just came back and crafted cards for duels bc its one of my favorite modes, Im gonna go make forum posts but like, its one of my favorite modes so coming back and wanting to play it, its a lot and I'm in a bad mood too now.

I used to play duels when it was still receiving updates, It was so much fun and i crafted many legendaries for the meta. It just feels awful to lose my investment there and if only they could balance it the gamemode is by far on of the coolest things the game has to offer the insane decks and yugioh style gameplay was really enjoyable even going 0/3 in duels gunna miss it alot.

So....good thing I got my first-ever 12 wins (first ever above 5 wins, in fact!) the other day. I had to abuse the atrocity that is Sludge/Excavate Warlock but hey, I got it.