Lies. Unstable ghoul is rarely a counter to divine shield poisonous Murlocs.
Typically, the Murlocs in said situation have 30-40 health and the Murlocs will still win. I think I am 2 of 10 in defeating Murlocs with Unstable Ghoul using non-Murlocs (Dragons, Beasts, etc.).
Typically the Murloc player is Rafaam or Nozdormu, they have had 4 to 6 triples and their Murlocs have are 35/35 or larger
Unstable Ghoul only makes a big difference if you are also poisonous Murlocs and perhaps you have a Holy Mackerel or 2 so blowing off Divine Shields give you an advantage even if it removed your own because then you gain 1 or 2 divine shields.
I ended up registering only to foster my complaint on Murloc builds in BG.
There is ALWAYS at least one player who builds the Murloc board and they, in my experience, always end up winning.
Murlocs make the best use of Bran out of all classes. Removing him would at least give other builds a fighting chance. Additionally, Toxin Fin basically does nothing in those builds because they will never waste coins to buy it when they know the goal is to get to Megasaur anyways. Plus, you don't even need poisonous once you have Bran. It's super easy to make the Murlocs so big, that it really doesn't matter anyways.
It is pretty frustrating to constantly make top 3 to only always lose to the guy who, you guessed it, high rolled the Megasaur/Bran combination. There are games where they don't quite get there, but in my experience, those are way fewer than they should be. Or you could keep Bran in the game and just remove Megasaur. That might work too.
I feel like Holy Mackerel isn't mentioned enough in this thread. Part of the reason Murlocs are so much more consistent now is that card exists. It's so powerful that two of them can single handedly take on super murlocs.
Chances are that in a lobby of eight players who know what they are doing, two or three go for murlocs. One of them manages to high-roll into an early Brann and wins. - Not every lobby, but happens often enough that it is boring now, even though I will say it wasn't a couple of months back...just seen it and done it myself too many times now.
I feel like BGs needs some changes to freshen things up again pretty badly...Not a rebalance but a total face-lift with new minions and new effects - its time to see some different builds.
I think there's too much snowballing and battlecries leaving permanent buffs in general, Brann just amplifies that problem. Plus unlike Rivendare he's uncounterable because his ability is only relevant during assembly phase.
Picking counters and constructing synergies is only relevant in early to mid game, after that game shifts into contest of whoever finds the most buffs for their already established board. Divine shield/poisonous combo does feel like a cheap shot in the end.
Playing right now. 5 out of 8 players are on Murlocs. Murlocs are horrendous in the early/mid game yet...almost all players go for that because they are the best late game. It's pretty telling that things are getting skewed towards them...
Edit: Played 4 straight games and lost all 4 games to...Windfury'd, divine shielded giant murlocs. Every. Single. Game. More than half of the players go for murlocs. It's getting old real fast. I'm trying the new heroes but what's the point? The game play is always the same. Go murlocs or die. Mecs CANNOT beat murlocs. I don't know why anyone thinks this. I've never lost a game where i was divine shielded murlocs vs anything but a mirror (ok that's anecdotal, but i still don't believe mecs can reliably beat murlocs).
Mechs can survive with mini cobalt and eggs and rover. Grow bigger with divine shield synergy and mackarel.
Beasts have pack leader and rats for early game and highmane Hydra for mid game.
Demons are good to go when you get a juggler and tier 2 taunt.
Dragon I think are weakest as you cant win unless you have kalecgos. At that point none of the individual minion and their abilities matter, you just need stats.
I like the meta just the Fine at the moment. I can get top 4 with any comp and U win mostly with Beasts actually. Deathrattle comp is still great especially if you get it early enough
Murlocs, like a lot of builds, feel unstoppable when they are "Complete". Demons with a Triple Soul Juggle (or two), Dragons with the full package of buffs. Even beasts with their full package. But getting there is hard. If three people go Murloc in a single game, chances are they might all die because they are diluting the pool.
Don't forget those nasty rivendare deathrattle builds. Or even worse, the serious divine shield builds.
I like the meta just the Fine at the moment. I can get top 4 with any comp and U win mostly with Beasts actually. Deathrattle comp is still great especially if you get it early enough
I think the meta sucks some.
I just won back to back games with Nozdormu and Rafaam with Murlocs.
With Nozdormu I did not even have any Murlocs except I grabbed the 3/2 Discover a Murloc guy on Tier 5. I was all Beast with a board that was consistently winning/tying, but that wasn't going to last.
Brann showed, I sold everything and grabbed the next 3 Murlocs, discovered a Triple and got a Megasaur that turn, selling a number of fine minions like Rat Packs, Infest Wolves, the new Lizard thing that looks like a My Little Pony, and a 5/5 deathrattle Taunt.
With Rafaam, I didn't really have anything decent until Tier 5.
Both games I cruised to victory after Tier 5. If they eliminated Brann, it would make being Shudderwock really special and Murlocs would be a rougher road to travel.
I also think they should get rid of Rafaam -- when they started Battlegrounds, they wanted all heros to be about the same win rate. Yet Rafaam has been the "go to" hero for months.
Several people are arguing how "beasts are terrible and murlocs are OP, they win every game, every time". Do you guys really want to look at the statistics at all? The week of April 14th for the top 20% of players, beasts were the highest winrate build. They pulled an average placement of 3.82. That's really freaking good. Dragons were second with 3.93. Where are murloc builds on the list? 4th at 4.23. Think about that. 4.23. That means they statistically LOSE. Anything below 4, LOSES on average. That's murlocs. Not beasts. Not dragons.
If you guys want to say everyone plays murlocs every game... Still, doesn't work. Sorry buds. Dragons are more prevalent than murlocs are (17.5% vs 14.1%).
Personally, I see maybe 1-2 murloc builders per game, and maybe 20% of them I see get the nuts. Even then, I still find myself beating murlocs with beasts, dragons, and mechs half of the time. Or them losing to other people building that.
Keep in mind... You can still play tech cards in battlegrounds, just like standard. *cough cough* Unstable ghoul is your friend if necessary.
And yes. Fungalmancer is pretty darn bad. 4.89 average for the top 50%. That's basically averaging 5th place. Even when he does get the nuts off, he has a lower total first place rate than Rafaam and....guess who, Alexstrasza. Hellooooo Dragon Queen, with more first places than our "OP Murloc" friend.
Funglemancer may have a low win rate, but he also has a higher skill floor than most every other Hero in the game mode. It is easier to play him poorly than it is to play him well for most players. He scales infinitely harder than any other Hero.
His low win rate is much more likely to be a result of people being poor drafters than it is him being a weak Hero.
Several people are arguing how "beasts are terrible and murlocs are OP, they win every game, every time". Do you guys really want to look at the statistics at all? The week of April 14th for the top 20% of players, beasts were the highest winrate build. They pulled an average placement of 3.82. That's really freaking good. Dragons were second with 3.93. Where are murloc builds on the list? 4th at 4.23. Think about that. 4.23. That means they statistically LOSE. Anything below 4, LOSES on average. That's murlocs. Not beasts. Not dragons.
Yep. It's a gambling perception bias thing. Everyone remembers the first place Murloc finishes where they don't even break a sweat for the last three rounds, but disregard the 8th place finishes. Beasts are more boring; lots of 3rd and 4th place finishes and you just feel helpless when you run into high-rolled Murlocs or Dragons.
But it depends on your goal, ultimately. Some people are in it for the individual rounds and the goal is 1st. Personally, I like the meta game. I'm not overly competitive, but managing risk and reward to increase your rating in the long haul is satisfying even if it sometimes means making a lower ceiling play just to outlast a couple of other players.
Holy macarel is killing bgs late game not the megasaur or king. You can run literally any comp with two macarels as addition, and watch enemies refresh divine shields and all heavy buffed units getting destroyed by a poison 8-4 murlocbois (ofc preordered rng included otherwise doesnt work).
Battlecry: Give your Murlocs Taunt, Windfury Divine Shield, or Poisonous (chosen randomly).
Golden version gives two randomly chosen keywords.
Works like Enhance-O-Mechano, it gives every Murloc you have one of those four Keywords, chosen randomly.
That way getting the incredibly powerful divine shield is more inconsistent and it is very hard to get it on all Murlocs.
Taunt might land on the lowest health Murloc and Poisonous on the highest attack one, you might get Windfuries despite the minion health not supporting it yet, etc.
The card could maybe then be even T5 actually.
As I said, I would basically replace all current Murloc cards with new ones.
Regular Hearthstone cards can only be balanced by being moved up or down tiers. As such they are very limited in design space.
Original Battlegrounds cards can also have their stats and text altered. That makes balancing the game much easier.
On top of that, Murlocs are kinds dull, you can have any of them and just buff them up, the reward for having Warleader or Murk-Eye is quite little compared to the reward you get for choosing the right ability minions in the other tribes.
I would definitely shift them away from battlecries and more towards abilities like the other tribes. This lead to more different choices and more different strategies rather than just a reward for being lucky to get Bran.
Every build has a specific role in the Battlegrounds and the Murlocs' role is to be the ultimate late game tribe that struggles to get there. If there is a problem, it is that the new +1/+1 murloc has made it less of a risk to go murlocs, as it is now safer to go full murlocs, while previously it was mostly a tribe you could "pivot" to after having a generic, directionless midgame.
Yes somehow its frustrating, if you struggle through midgame, and try to get something winnable going, and then you see a Guy who has big DivineShield Murlocs.
BUT! as said before, it has to do with lack of MidgamePressure if you see them Everygame in Late. The Divine Shield Builds and Beasts just wreck "pure Murlocs" way to hard. Most of the Time you have to Transition into Murlocs from some kind of Menagerie, and have proper amounts of Health (like 2 losing turns) if you go to 5. And then the Gamble begins^^
Lost Games where i i had like 3 Triples just to find megasaur and not happening, or stuff when i had 2 Megasaurs with a good Murloc Board and Brann i just got the Stat- Buffs and Poisen , and then you sit there and still lose with the 25/25 Murlocs....
Its the Gambler Build! I can just tell you this: Im playing at 7200 atm and i would never again force Murlocs! PPL fighting for every HP with every buffed up Shitminion in Midgame and hope to get the good Stuff and some kind of Comp! and naked Murlocs cant compete 95% of the Time! SO, just take the gamble when conditions or fullfilled (enough health for Highrolling to 5, Big Murkey and a Warleader Probably, and you need a Brann to win with them too)
Lies. Unstable ghoul is rarely a counter to divine shield poisonous Murlocs.
Typically, the Murlocs in said situation have 30-40 health and the Murlocs will still win. I think I am 2 of 10 in defeating Murlocs with Unstable Ghoul using non-Murlocs (Dragons, Beasts, etc.).
Typically the Murloc player is Rafaam or Nozdormu, they have had 4 to 6 triples and their Murlocs have are 35/35 or larger
Unstable Ghoul only makes a big difference if you are also poisonous Murlocs and perhaps you have a Holy Mackerel or 2 so blowing off Divine Shields give you an advantage even if it removed your own because then you gain 1 or 2 divine shields.
I ended up registering only to foster my complaint on Murloc builds in BG.
There is ALWAYS at least one player who builds the Murloc board and they, in my experience, always end up winning.
Murlocs make the best use of Bran out of all classes. Removing him would at least give other builds a fighting chance. Additionally, Toxin Fin basically does nothing in those builds because they will never waste coins to buy it when they know the goal is to get to Megasaur anyways. Plus, you don't even need poisonous once you have Bran. It's super easy to make the Murlocs so big, that it really doesn't matter anyways.
It is pretty frustrating to constantly make top 3 to only always lose to the guy who, you guessed it, high rolled the Megasaur/Bran combination. There are games where they don't quite get there, but in my experience, those are way fewer than they should be. Or you could keep Bran in the game and just remove Megasaur. That might work too.
I feel like Holy Mackerel isn't mentioned enough in this thread. Part of the reason Murlocs are so much more consistent now is that card exists. It's so powerful that two of them can single handedly take on super murlocs.
Chances are that in a lobby of eight players who know what they are doing, two or three go for murlocs. One of them manages to high-roll into an early Brann and wins. - Not every lobby, but happens often enough that it is boring now, even though I will say it wasn't a couple of months back...just seen it and done it myself too many times now.
I feel like BGs needs some changes to freshen things up again pretty badly...Not a rebalance but a total face-lift with new minions and new effects - its time to see some different builds.
Here's a video of Savjz that highlights EXACTLY why both Mackerel and Bran (but more so Bran) are a problem in BG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORXbFCCBxbY
I would for sure change Megasaur, because it is not original to the battlegrounds.
The regular hearthstone cards are all very bad for the game, because they can only be balanced by being moved up or down tiers.
On the other hand battlegrounds original cards can also have their stats and texts changed.
It just opens up much more design space.
Since almost all of Murlocs build consists of original Hearthstone cards, I would rework them entirely.
I think there's too much snowballing and battlecries leaving permanent buffs in general, Brann just amplifies that problem. Plus unlike Rivendare he's uncounterable because his ability is only relevant during assembly phase.
Picking counters and constructing synergies is only relevant in early to mid game, after that game shifts into contest of whoever finds the most buffs for their already established board. Divine shield/poisonous combo does feel like a cheap shot in the end.
Piloted Shredder, Knife Juggler, Mad Scientist, Dr. Boom
Need to be removed from this game
Playing right now. 5 out of 8 players are on Murlocs. Murlocs are horrendous in the early/mid game yet...almost all players go for that because they are the best late game. It's pretty telling that things are getting skewed towards them...
Edit: Played 4 straight games and lost all 4 games to...Windfury'd, divine shielded giant murlocs. Every. Single. Game. More than half of the players go for murlocs. It's getting old real fast. I'm trying the new heroes but what's the point? The game play is always the same. Go murlocs or die. Mecs CANNOT beat murlocs. I don't know why anyone thinks this. I've never lost a game where i was divine shielded murlocs vs anything but a mirror (ok that's anecdotal, but i still don't believe mecs can reliably beat murlocs).
Murlocs are not strong until the very late game.
Mechs can survive with mini cobalt and eggs and rover. Grow bigger with divine shield synergy and mackarel.
Beasts have pack leader and rats for early game and highmane Hydra for mid game.
Demons are good to go when you get a juggler and tier 2 taunt.
Dragon I think are weakest as you cant win unless you have kalecgos. At that point none of the individual minion and their abilities matter, you just need stats.
I like the meta just the Fine at the moment. I can get top 4 with any comp and U win mostly with Beasts actually. Deathrattle comp is still great especially if you get it early enough
Don't forget those nasty rivendare deathrattle builds. Or even worse, the serious divine shield builds.
I think the meta sucks some.
I just won back to back games with Nozdormu and Rafaam with Murlocs.
With Nozdormu I did not even have any Murlocs except I grabbed the 3/2 Discover a Murloc guy on Tier 5. I was all Beast with a board that was consistently winning/tying, but that wasn't going to last.
Brann showed, I sold everything and grabbed the next 3 Murlocs, discovered a Triple and got a Megasaur that turn, selling a number of fine minions like Rat Packs, Infest Wolves, the new Lizard thing that looks like a My Little Pony, and a 5/5 deathrattle Taunt.
With Rafaam, I didn't really have anything decent until Tier 5.
Both games I cruised to victory after Tier 5. If they eliminated Brann, it would make being Shudderwock really special and Murlocs would be a rougher road to travel.
I also think they should get rid of Rafaam -- when they started Battlegrounds, they wanted all heros to be about the same win rate. Yet Rafaam has been the "go to" hero for months.
"Fungalmancer is one of the weakest heroes"...
hahahaha
I don't understand you guys and your arguments.
Several people are arguing how "beasts are terrible and murlocs are OP, they win every game, every time". Do you guys really want to look at the statistics at all? The week of April 14th for the top 20% of players, beasts were the highest winrate build. They pulled an average placement of 3.82. That's really freaking good. Dragons were second with 3.93. Where are murloc builds on the list? 4th at 4.23. Think about that. 4.23. That means they statistically LOSE. Anything below 4, LOSES on average. That's murlocs. Not beasts. Not dragons.
If you guys want to say everyone plays murlocs every game... Still, doesn't work. Sorry buds. Dragons are more prevalent than murlocs are (17.5% vs 14.1%).
Personally, I see maybe 1-2 murloc builders per game, and maybe 20% of them I see get the nuts. Even then, I still find myself beating murlocs with beasts, dragons, and mechs half of the time. Or them losing to other people building that.
Keep in mind... You can still play tech cards in battlegrounds, just like standard. *cough cough* Unstable ghoul is your friend if necessary.
And yes. Fungalmancer is pretty darn bad. 4.89 average for the top 50%. That's basically averaging 5th place. Even when he does get the nuts off, he has a lower total first place rate than Rafaam and....guess who, Alexstrasza. Hellooooo Dragon Queen, with more first places than our "OP Murloc" friend.
Funglemancer may have a low win rate, but he also has a higher skill floor than most every other Hero in the game mode. It is easier to play him poorly than it is to play him well for most players. He scales infinitely harder than any other Hero.
His low win rate is much more likely to be a result of people being poor drafters than it is him being a weak Hero.
Yep. It's a gambling perception bias thing. Everyone remembers the first place Murloc finishes where they don't even break a sweat for the last three rounds, but disregard the 8th place finishes. Beasts are more boring; lots of 3rd and 4th place finishes and you just feel helpless when you run into high-rolled Murlocs or Dragons.
But it depends on your goal, ultimately. Some people are in it for the individual rounds and the goal is 1st. Personally, I like the meta game. I'm not overly competitive, but managing risk and reward to increase your rating in the long haul is satisfying even if it sometimes means making a lower ceiling play just to outlast a couple of other players.
Holy macarel is killing bgs late game not the megasaur or king. You can run literally any comp with two macarels as addition, and watch enemies refresh divine shields and all heavy buffed units getting destroyed by a poison 8-4 murlocbois (ofc preordered rng included otherwise doesnt work).
I think this would proberly tackle Megasaur:
Replace it with an original card:
"Gentle Turtoise" Tier 6 5/4 Beast
Battlecry: Give your Murlocs Taunt, Windfury Divine Shield, or Poisonous (chosen randomly).
Golden version gives two randomly chosen keywords.
Works like Enhance-O-Mechano, it gives every Murloc you have one of those four Keywords, chosen randomly.
That way getting the incredibly powerful divine shield is more inconsistent and it is very hard to get it on all Murlocs.
Taunt might land on the lowest health Murloc and Poisonous on the highest attack one, you might get Windfuries despite the minion health not supporting it yet, etc.
The card could maybe then be even T5 actually.
As I said, I would basically replace all current Murloc cards with new ones.
Regular Hearthstone cards can only be balanced by being moved up or down tiers. As such they are very limited in design space.
Original Battlegrounds cards can also have their stats and text altered. That makes balancing the game much easier.
On top of that, Murlocs are kinds dull, you can have any of them and just buff them up, the reward for having Warleader or Murk-Eye is quite little compared to the reward you get for choosing the right ability minions in the other tribes.
I would definitely shift them away from battlecries and more towards abilities like the other tribes. This lead to more different choices and more different strategies rather than just a reward for being lucky to get Bran.
People often see murloc as op because they got 1st everyone when they make it. Noone cares when they got trash 70% of the time and got last.
Every build has a specific role in the Battlegrounds and the Murlocs' role is to be the ultimate late game tribe that struggles to get there. If there is a problem, it is that the new +1/+1 murloc has made it less of a risk to go murlocs, as it is now safer to go full murlocs, while previously it was mostly a tribe you could "pivot" to after having a generic, directionless midgame.
Yes somehow its frustrating, if you struggle through midgame, and try to get something winnable going, and then you see a Guy who has big DivineShield Murlocs.
BUT! as said before, it has to do with lack of MidgamePressure if you see them Everygame in Late. The Divine Shield Builds and Beasts just wreck "pure Murlocs" way to hard. Most of the Time you have to Transition into Murlocs from some kind of Menagerie, and have proper amounts of Health (like 2 losing turns) if you go to 5. And then the Gamble begins^^
Lost Games where i i had like 3 Triples just to find megasaur and not happening, or stuff when i had 2 Megasaurs with a good Murloc Board and Brann i just got the Stat- Buffs and Poisen , and then you sit there and still lose with the 25/25 Murlocs....
Its the Gambler Build! I can just tell you this: Im playing at 7200 atm and i would never again force Murlocs! PPL fighting for every HP with every buffed up Shitminion in Midgame and hope to get the good Stuff and some kind of Comp! and naked Murlocs cant compete 95% of the Time! SO, just take the gamble when conditions or fullfilled (enough health for Highrolling to 5, Big Murkey and a Warleader Probably, and you need a Brann to win with them too)