Battlegrounds Balance Changes - 4 New Heroes - 4 Old Heroes Removed
As we posted about last week in our datamining post, 4 new Heroes were added to the Battlegrounds game mode, and simultaneously 4 others were removed! There were also balance changes made to the Mech, Demon and Murloc tribes. Read all about it below!
Quote from BlizzardBob the Bartender has been hard at work keeping the tavern tidy for Hearthstone’s heroes, and it appears that the news has started to spread. Hearthstone Battlegrounds is about to add some extra chaos—and a few Explorers—with a new update coming to the mode today.
Sindragosa, Elise Starseeker, Brann Bronzebeard, and Sir Finley Mrrgglton are the latest heroes to enter the Battlegrounds. Each one comes with a new hero power to give you more options to push toward a first-place finish. Read on for details on these new heroes, as well as some additional updates coming to Hearthstone Battlegrounds.
Please note that these updates do not require an additional download.
Heroes Entering the Battlegrounds
The following Heroes have been added:
- New Hero: Sindragosa
- New Hero: Elise Starseeker
NOTE: The "Recruitment Map" recruits a minion from your current tavern tier after upgrading Bob's Tavern.
- New Hero: Brann Bronzebeard
- New Hero: Sir Finley Mrrgglton
Heroes Leaving the Battlegrounds
To make way for new challengers, the Heroes below have left Hearthstone Battlegrounds for the time being. We may see them return in a future update.
- King Mukla
- Giantfin
- Millificent Manastorm
- Lich Baz'hial
Balance Updates
Minions:
- Primalfin Lookout
- Moved from Tavern Tier 5 to Tavern Tier 4
- Voidlord
- Moved from Tavern Tier 6 to Tavern Tier 5
- Junkbot
- Moved from Tavern Tier 4 to Tavern Tier 5
- Coldlight Seer
- Moved from Tavern Tier 3 to Tavern Tier 2
Developer comments: We wanted to buff both Demons and Murlocs, so we moved those minions down a Tavern Tier. Junkbot was a bit too strong for Tavern Tier 4 and often made it so mech players never had a good reason to upgrade to Tavern Tier 5. With these changes, we think the minion types are closer together in power level.
Ranking System
We’ve made adjustments to the number of points given for first place. In the original system, you got 240 points for a first place on your first game, and 24 pts for a first place on your 150th (or later) game. Now, you will get 190 pts for a first place on your first game and 95 pts for a first place on your 150th (or later) game.
Bug Fixes
- Infested Wolf
- The Triple version of Infested Wolf has been moved from Tavern Tier 2 to Tavern Tier 3, consistent with its base form.
- Rat Pack
- The Triple version of Rat Pack has been moved from Tavern Tier 3 to Tavern Tier 2, consistent with its base form.
- Plant tokens spawned from Adapt effects are now Tavern Tier 1.
- Snake tokens spawned from Snake Trap are now Tavern Tier 1.
Future Updates
As of today, we are planning our next Battlegrounds update for early December. Below is a brief preview of some of the things we’re working on.
- We’d like to continue balancing minions and Heroes based on how they’re performing. We don’t have the changes solidified yet, but we’ll be watching things closely and will have more to say soon.
- We’d like to continue rotating new Heroes into the game while rotating some existing Heroes out. We have some recognizable faces we’re working to include in December.
- We have two new minions in the works that we’re currently planning to include in the December update: King Bagurgle, a brand-new card, and Floating Watcher, which you may recognize from the Goblins vs. Gnomes set.
- We have been working on the first iteration of the Stats feature, to give you more insight into your performance. We’d like to surface some fun stats, like how many Triples you’ve created, your top five Heroes by wins, and more. An updated version of Stats will be available next year.
Why they dont update Shadderwock.... It is so unfair when u can have 200 pogo hopper just staying at tier 2 the whole game. The only counter for this is like 3-4 minions with poisonous.
You need to be extremely lucky to pull it off. And I'm saying that after I played this strategy.
As far as my memory goes (correct me where wrong), there are only 15 pogo hoppers in the pool, allowing you to get (in some unholy ultra lucky situation) five golden copies at best, and significantly lowering the chance of any subsequent hopper you encounter. And that is assuming none of your 7 opponents will ever purchase a pogo hopper.
The pogo hopper build is strong, requires tremendous amounts of luck to actually pull it off.
That may have been an approximation. The other players mmrs in the game should also effect mmr
I think that the bigger problem isn’t necessarily the balance. Yes, these changes are good, and yes they could’ve done a bit more to fix other pieces of the game like Amalgam or Nefarian. But my personal issue is that the minion pool is too small. I know that the game is new (still being in beta), but there are so few unique strats that it gets kinda old.
Look, I like Battlegrounds. But if the everyone (most notably Trolden) is gonna do this and nothing else, then I’d like more to watch than everyone trying to grab the same 5 minions for half an hour. Those are at least my thoughts on this.
I would think minion pool is smaller for easier to learn and understand and to play around.
This is the Recruitment map from Elise's hero power. You're just paying 3 gold to discover a minion, so there's a decent chance you end up wasting 3 gold on a minion you don't want.
In other words, it's potentially worse than useless. The only good part seems to me that you might discover a minion that's no longer in the pool.
Edit:
Misread the card so everything I said was flawed. Sorry.
Minions cost three gold anyway. This guarantees a "mini tavern" of the tier you just upgraded to, which is very handy tier 4 and above. Especially given how the pool of minions decrease as you tier up. Also, if you have 3 gold leftover after upgrading, you don't need to spend one to reroll for a chance of seeing a higher tier minion. You just spend the 3 immediately to buy one.
Not saying Elise is good per se, but it is far from useless.
Elise: Upgrade tavern > Spend 3 mana on map > Be forced to pick 1 of 3
Bartendotron: Upgrade tavern > Reroll with the 1 saved gold > Spend 3 mana on whatever you want
Why do people downvote this comment. He is right this hero is useless even Putricide has more use. I agree with the guy above me
You severely underestimate the consistency of getting only the minion of that tier. Especially in high rank where the minion pool is much smaller.
I don't know. I still think it's decent. 3 gold is what it costs to normally get a minion, and you're guaranteed a selection of 3 minions from your current tier rather than your selection being adulterated by the previous tavern tiers.
My point is that you aren’t guaranteed to roll a minion of the desired tier, much less have three options after rerolling. Three options of the highest tier available isn’t useless
It can be usefull, but it often means that you're forced to spend 3 gold on a minion you don't want. Which you then sell (if you have board space), so you end up with -2 gold total. If that happens 4 times in one match (like in the one I screenshotted), you just waste a total of 8 gold.
Edit: We'll just wait on the next batch of Innkeeper statistics, I'm betting on bottom 5 win rates for Elise.
First batch of stats puts it at number 8.
Well then apparently I was wrong and my game was just exceptionally shitty (:
hope they remove Nightmare Amalgam at some point ....
Played less than 150 games. Just won and got 84 pts instead of 95+. What's the deal???
150th (or later)
Sorry if I wasn't clear, I've only played around 30-40 games and have stopped getting over 85pts for a win.