Maybe for a day or two at most, depending on your platform, as there is a transition window for the update to propagate to everyone upon release. After that, nope.
Even if you could still play in 5.4, Campaign 5 would completely not work at all in 5.4 and would surely crash the game. Heck, any opposing team in any game mode that uses Lycanthropy troops or Lycanthropy gems would probably crash the 5.4 client.
Is it kosher for someone on the beta to let us know what the spawn rate is for these new gems?
Are they as common as doomskulls? More? Less?
Probably can’t say, due to NDA, but figured I’d ask just in case. Or so that someone might ask on stream.
Contrarian opinion warning: this will provide new challenges for how to build effective and reliable teams, which is a good thing for me. I might love it, I might hate it, there will probably be some of both and a lot of in between, but I’m reserving judgment until I get to play it.
Bring on the madness.
I don’t think we can say, sadly. Q&A stream would be a good place to ask, I doubt that’s something they wouldn’t share.
Stonehammer will go from worthless to essential basically. 
Otherwise those who run Queen Bee times 2 teams will continue on keeping on. (Since the team will cleanse against Lycanthropy.)
So though change looks “scary”.
None of this is a big thing once Lycanthropy is actually fixed.
Yeah… So it’s usually best not to mention the beta anywhere but the beta in regards to new stuff.
Otherwise it can easily come off “I know something you don’t know.”
That was not my intention, simply answering a question directed towards testers.
In my experience I wouldn’t trust whatever numbers anyone thinks are there. (If there are any at all.)
From past beta experiences, I can definitely say with confidence that any observed rates on beta about doomskulls have next to zero reliability regarding actual rates on the production servers when the update goes live.
Beta testers provide sanity checks on things in a sanitized environment. The devs take that feedback, possibly make modifictions after the beta period ends, and then apply the final product to the production servers with the update.
If I had to take an educated stab at this, I would assert that uber-doomskulls rates are likely heavily affected by the dynamic difficulty skyfall mechanism, where the game internally modifies spawn/drop rates on the fly based on a number of factors during any given match.
My comment was in reference to that↑. Not the question asked prompted by this comment made.
Aha, thanks for the clarification. I was genuinely just excited/curious what the feedback would be on this stuff once it went public, but I can see how it could look like bragging or something. Of course, no one in beta should brag, since we were chosen essentially at random, not because we did anything important. I’ll do my best to not come off as bragging or whatnot! 
I wonder if this will be accurate, and/or apply to all types of new gems, and not just uber-skulls (I’m less worried about them than lycanthropy gems, which I feel will only be tolerable if they’re really few and far between 
).
I’m excited for your notes, as always; thank you for taking the time to gift that to all of us unable to make the streams 
And I must say, though I’m fearful for lycanthropy gems, the others seem mostly okay to me (uber-skulls will be bad for Arena, as others have noted). If lycanthropy was just phased out after the Campaign (“oh, yeah, that was always the intention”, they should say…), or fixed to be a reasonable (meaning actual) debuff (or new “neutral” status), then overall this update might be okay 
Technically, it could. Although, there’s nothing in the game files that have been datamined (yet) that would suggest that Lycanthropy gems can skyfall. The only troops that appear to be able to mass create Lycanthropy gems in Campaign 5 are the campaign mythic and its two Doomed-tier forms.
EDIT: Hot take of the moment: I have to wonder… are the flavor text of the Doomed-tier forms a hint?
Would Skroll Reborn require The Sun tarot card from Campaign 3, while Hatir Ascendant would require The Moon tarot card from Campaign 5 to craft in the Soulforge? 
How many players would rage if that was the case?
Thanks. Glad to take notes for everyone who cannot make the stream or just wants a condensed version of it to skim through.
Yeesh. Not looking forward to that new update. Hoping we can just nix it now on the dl…
Honestly just not seeing anything good (crunchy) in it, only more gimmicky stuff. Maybe I needed to make a thread of things I hoped NOT to see in GoW rather than the things I did, as is usually requested…
At least I perhaps think some of these new additions should be confined to certain modes, rather than spread everywhere – in which case I could see it as a fun new mode. From an overall game balance perspective, it just doesn’t feel good – and that was essentially my feedback for Lycanthropy too.
It’s just annoying we don’t get to express dissent (or any kind of constructive feedback) until it’s at the release stage and too late anyway.
Its been a long while, devs don’t care.
Are you assuming that the achievements and the gem additions are all that’s coming from the new update or are you one of the chosen ones…aka beta testers?
Not a beta tester (and yes mostly assuming there won’t be too much else aside from what’s related to those achievements/tutorials/gems, etc.)
In some fairness to my assuming, the update title was ‘Heroic Gems Update’, as well
Could definitely (always) be wrong, though, and would probably be happy to be as well, if any other things in it could maybe offset (imo) those additions a bit.
Small batch of text changes up today 
The task re-roll is a little clearer now:
Also up are spells for Indrajit’s Palace troops, which include a reference to “Hellstorm”, most likely a red-purple storm. No traits to see yet.
Sounds like the reroll is aimed at new players. It lets them skip difficult tasks like higher level delves while still doing other tasks.
For endgame players, reroll doesn’t makes sense. Without the stars you’d miss out on the rewards.
Sounds like a ploy to get people who reroll without understanding how it works to then have to buy the Elite+ pass (assuming they’ve already bought the Elite pass).