It's official - no pity timer

Community Discussion
21

Did they state why you were compensated or are you just assuming it was due to a faulty pity timer? If compensation was offered due to a faulty pity timer in the past why are they refusing compensation now?
I am also aware of the 10 pack epic timer. I did go 11 packs before getting an epic one time but put it down to my miscounting. Now I’m not so sure.

22

They stated that there was a bug that caused players not to get legendaries that they were supposed to get, as above.

23

It’s an easy google search.

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/3170-get-2000-arcane-dust-blizzard-makes-up-for-pity

or,

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/32402-players-compensated-with-2000-arcane-dust/

Note though, source link to the old forum seems to be deleted (the official post). But you can clearly see what they said. No, they didn’t specifically used the word ‘pity timer’ (I too wonder why they don’t acknowledge this. either they’re thinking of a time when they double back, eliminating the pity timer, claiming it was never officially said, or something to do with might-be gambling/loot box issue or something).

If I’m not mistaken, 2017 around that time is when they implemented no duplicate legendary rule. And yes, many people including me were playing at that time, and remember some people asking of why they got the 2000 dust (I wasn’t one of them).

How legit is your claim though? I track my pack opening manually, and I also had couple of occasions when I thought I opened a legendary/epic after passing the pity timer, but without hard proof, something like pity tracker at least, you can’t say for certain of how many packs you opened. For me at least, when you have several accounts, opening classic, some expansion packs in weeks or months in between, it gets really confusing.

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24

I’m highly suspicious that OP actually opened 43 boomsday packs without getting a legendary, the most likely scenario is that he miscounted or Didn’t see a leggo that he got.

25

Obviously I have no hard proof. Like you I manually keep track of pack opening and it is possible that I made a mistake however that is why I waited until I counted 42 packs instead of reporting it at 40. Over counting one pack is very possible. Over counting 2 is unlikely but possible. By the time I got to 3 packs past the timer I was certain that I had opened 40 or more packs even if I had made a mistake somewhere along the line. I can’t blame people who doubt but I know what I know. The most interesting part of this to me was Blizzards reply. I know they have never officially acknowledged the pity timer but this is the first time I have seen them specifically denying it’s existence. That is what this statement does.

“Any further packs after that is just subject to RNG. There is no guarantee after a certain point.”

26

I don’t see much difference from previous official GM answers.

Their statements always circle around the following:

  • GMs are not developers.
  • GMs can only confirm official information from developers.
  • There’s no official information about a “pity timer” for 40 packs.

However, we also do have:

  • Countless experiments and tracking tools that indicate the existence of such a hidden feature.
  • Blizzard compensating players after patch 8.4 for opening a fewer Legendary or Epic cards as they were supposed to.
  • Blizzard obeying the Chinese law and admitting that there’s an increasing drop chance for Legendary cards as player opens more packs, ensuring an average drop rate of 1 in 20.

On the other hand, we have you… who can count manually up to 43 (at least) and knows what he knows.

Do you understand how this looks a hell of a lot like the Anti-Vax movement and why it cannot maintain a meaningful discussion?

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27

Its funny how those trying to disprove the pity timer always forget to press record.
There are videos of thousands of pack openings supporting the pity timer, however, i have not once seen a video that opens more than 40 without a legendary.

Also this have never been acknowledged by Blizzard. Probably to allow some room to change it without much upset since it was never official anyway.

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28

The point of my reply was to try to get someone look into OP’s pack opening history. Based on things posted on the Bug Report forum, I know that at least some support staff have that access.
I think it is far more likely that this will reveal that OP overlooked a legendary dropping during their pack opening than that anything actually went wrong.

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29

I’ve gotten 3 legends within 10 decks before. Should I put in a ticket?

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30

You are mixing quotes from two different people and pointing out inconsistencies. Well, that’s because we are different people.

That being said, they are not even that hard to reconcile.
What Boreas wrote is correct. There has been a single time when, as Blizzard described it, some people got one less epic or legendary than they should have. And this was at the same time that the “1 in first 10” rule was introduced.

Those circumstances, combined with the little information that is known about how many and which players were affected (nothing released from Blizzard, a few posts from people that seemed to confirm that all those who got compenstaion had opened packs after a long dry spell of legendaries) made it seem very plausible that when the new patch was released, something accidentally reset all internal pity timers to zero; that Blizzard then identified what the original value was; that they restored it; and that they then provided compensation for those who had their value now over 40 without legendaries.

Very plausible, as I said. Plausible enough that I think Boreas’ statements, while a bit too one-sided, should be considered correct. I too think that the dust awarded back then, and the communication issued, support the pity timer theory.

But Blizzard for whatever reasons did choose to phrase their words such that there is no admittance whatsoever of the existence of a pity timer. For whatever reason, they do not want that officially documented.
A support employee, in their responses, can never deviate from the official company guideline. So they can never admit a pity timer, regardless of whether or not it exists.

(I do think that the support employee on your case made their reply too strong, as companies generally try to use vague words, just like politicians, to talk around whatever they don’t want public, instead of straight out denying it. And while I don’t consider the support employee’s text as straight out denial of a pity timer, I do think they are too strong. They should have omitted the line about “just subject to RNG” and only included the line about there being no guarantee.

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31

I’m sorry to disappoint you but “first support line monkey” and “official representative” are two very different things. You could understand it if you notice words “after doing some research here” and think about their meaning.

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32

Past performance is not evidence of future results. :slight_smile: I’ll have 5k gold before the next expansion. I’ll post if I don’t get at least 2 legendaries.

33

Everyone in this thread is bickering about whether there is a pity timer or not. When it seems like we should be arguing for transparency. Blizzard loves the RNG pack system whether or not they have to set up a pity timer.

It’s awful to open packs and get legendaries you will never use or only for decks which you know you will never get to build. The cost of Hearthstone is outrageous. No amount of pity timers or special offers help any of us get what we truly want: to play the game.

How many times have you bought packs just in order to milk a little dust or hope to pull that one legendary so you don’t have to craft it. We rely on a pity time of 40 packs to get one legendary after the first ten of a new expansion. This is pitiful.

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34

It can be. It doesn’t have to be.
If you want all the cards of an expansion, as it releases, then yes it is expensive.

I have never dropped a penny on this game. I have a decent collection and a fair amount of dust.
While I can not afford to milly willy switch netdecks with cards I need to dust, I do have a nice collection of decks, and enough dust to craft a few cards if I see a deck I really want to play

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35

Blizzard has said–for the record, for court filings in China–that on average we should get one epic every five packs, and one legendary every 20 packs. (Which basically tracks with my gut sense–and yes, gut sense is very unreliable here!)

Link to their filing, with a translation from Chinese:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/69dexs/china_announces_hearthstone_card_pack_rarity_odds/

So we’re not “counting on” the pity timer. The pity timer is a backstop in case we have a run of really bad card draws, because odds are we’ll get a legendary before the timer runs halfway down.

pitytracker.com relies on self-reported totals, so take it with a grain of salt, but for the last 10 expansions, it reports a rate of >0.5 legendaries per pack, i.e. 1 in 20 packs.

Well, there are lots of different builds. If the cards I get are random, then, yeah, some of them are going to be for builds I don’t use. If I never play Murloc Shaman, then I’m gonna get some cards I don’t want because they’re for Murloc Shaman. That’s what “random” means.

OTOH, maybe after I draw Scargil, I’ll give that build a try, so you never know!

36

The only worse thing than the rigged system they have for handing out legendary cards in this game is people actually spending money on packs believing they are getting their money’s worth.

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37

What you are referring to here is the “law of averages” not a pity timer. If the average rate of getting a legendary is 1 in 20 packs then you will almost always get a legendary within 40 packs, but on VERY rare occasions you may go past 40.

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38

It would not be VERY rare. You would go over 40 about 13% of time.

39

Personally I’ve never gone past 40 decks before drawing a legendary and haven’t read any credible post of somebody doing it either. I think it’s reasonable to assume that we at least had a pity timer. Whether or not it is still in place will be interesting to know. If it’s something that was removed to help address falling card sales will certainly not be a secret for long.

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40

There are two separate things going on. There’s a 5% chance that any pack has a legendary—Blizz has officially said that, at least in Chinese. And, if you open 39 packs in a row with no legendaries (from the same expansion), there is strong evidence that pack 40 has a 100% chance to have a legendary, because of the (unannounced) pity timer.

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