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.
the premium you pay for the 3 gold is that you get to pick from 3 minions at that tier level and not just any 3 minions up to that tier level. You don't always roll high tier minions so the guarantee is why you pay the premium in both cases. Even if we compare to pre nerf toki and say 1 gold to guarantee a high tier minion. ok now it is 3 gold to guarantee 3 high tier minions, so it is as valuable as pre nerf toki from the perspective of more high tier options to choose from. Yes, you have to take one of them, but you are also getting 3 rolls up front instead of over 3 turns which means more upfront time to work into your build rather than finding the workaround card on your third roll. You have the option at every tavern up which keeps you relevant throughout the game. Sometimes you will not get a minion that works super well with your comp, but a lot of the best players keep their comp flexible through most of the game anyway right up until like top 4 where they are just improving on what they have and dramatic change is a lot less likely. To me, it seems like elise's passive is really strong. I'll have to play with it a bunch to see how it works in practice but 3 minions of your highest available tier means you will probably find something that is relevant or at least a stat monster to use so you stay on curve. Maybe I'm too optimistic on the rolls but I think this is either very well balanced or too strong.
I thought it was pretty ok or strong before, but when you mentioned pre nerf toki and I thought about the comparison, that is what made me think of it as being even stronger. It is legit 1:1 value of PRE nerf toki but it is all up front and while you don't have the option to buy every card you still see more than you would have from toki on average. If you go to 6 with elise you get 5 rolls so you look at 15 cards and pick 5. With pre nerf toki you probably won't get 15 rolls in a game and I don't know how many minions on average pre nerf toki players were buying that were the high tier minion from the lineup.
However, toki did also roll the entire roster. So I dunno, I'm thinking while I am typing so this may be disjointed. lol. I think it is probably pretty balanced, it looks neat and overall BG is pretty fun. I think the gamble aspect and picking from 3 at a time gives the chance of a really high upshot that is worth picking her. Maybe she won't be as S tier as i'm fantasizing about but I'm hoping for a solid A tier and not a dumpstery hero. We'll see. Thanks for the comment, gave me something to chew over in my head. cheers : )
I think the map should cost 2 gold or at least let you discover minions from the tier you upgraded. Otherwise it's hard to payback.
if you are tavern tier 3 and upgrade to tav 4 you get to choose 3 minions from tavern tier 4. So you get 3 guaranteed highest tier minions available to you this run. You get to pick the best of 3 or the one that works best for your comp. So I think it IS doing what you want it to do.
Oh, no doubt - Junkbot and Hyena can be the most crucial parts of mechs and beasts respectively because of how easily they can grow big - honestly I think Cobalt Guardian *and* Junkbot should've been pushed up a tier each, to 4 and 5 respectively.
Not a big fan of some of these changes. Cobalt Guardian probably had to be pushed to 4, as between it and mech token deathrattlers it's too easy to get numerous divine shields out of it. Don't know how impactful Voidlord getting reduced would be - I've had a few demon wins (just over 5k rank - but haven't been playing much in the past few days) and even the one of those that actually used Soul Juggler, I didn't have a Voidlord (probably because it was tier 6, but still). Good in a Soul Juggler build, sure, but I've honestly had more success in the Brann demon variant.
The murloc changes are good though. Still need to hit a couple of Megasaurs (less with Brann) to actually win an endgame, but Primalfin and Coldlight changes are nice - Coldlight is probably the second best card for the murloc tribe (Toxfin is better for small numbers of murlocs, or singles, but Coldlight gives them a much needed health buff if you're going heavy into the murloc tribal) and Primalfin helps you get those triples and more good battlecries.
Also, Sindragosa is pretty interesting, but I hate the idea of having to freeze a board in order to get value out of her. In a perfect game you'd never freeze a board, as every frozen board means you're missing a free reroll for potentially better minions (to put it another way - every frozen board sort of costs you a gold at some point). So in a perfect game if you never had to reroll - Sindragosa would give no value. Of course, no-one has a perfect game and she's likely going to give a few buffs, but those end of turns are going to feel icky - do you freeze an ok minion in order to give it +1/+1, or do you not so you get the free reroll? I will say, we'll likely see a lot of buy a minion turn 1, freeze, freeze and upgrade turn 2, buy a +2/+2 minion on turn 3. Probably the best thing about her - even if it means the turn 3 minion is almost never a 2-star.
Honestly Junkbot was much more of a problem than Cobalt Guardian imo, I'm glad it was targeted for nerfs first.
They buff mukla and swiftly pull him.
Good for the game (weakens beasts) but
Like the fast paced changes
Man I’m going to miss giantfin. That guy is so good
There should be 150 gold entrance fee like Arena so we don't see people streaming this garbage.
If it’s garbage, why would people stream it
Yes, because that entry fee is the reason why no streamers stream arena.
Morons, man. Goddamn morons
Pretty much quit playing Battlegrounds after I lost 11 points for getting third place and was getting peanuts for first and second. Just played a new game for the first time in a while, to see if the balance changes had taken effect. They obviously had, since I chose Sir Finley for my hero, but I got first place and got 40 points. So, what happened to getting 195 points for first early on and 95 point later on? If first starts at 195 and goes down to 95 over time, how did I get 40?
Jesus, so much effort goes into keeping weaker players closer to good players than they realistically should be just to try to keep everyone happy and spending money that it really fucks with a lot of the game. If you want to call sitting at a computer a sport, even though it's not an athletic competition, then why not take a lesson from real sports and just let the better player do better and and the worse player do worse, instead of all this bullshit designed to keep everyone close and using an algorithm to try to make everyone happy. Then, maybe it would feel like you're playing your opponent and not just the game itself.
They obviously tagreted you as a much better than average player and singled you out for worse rewards.
Logic.
They should switch the tavern tiers of Rat Pack and Infested Wolf. Rat is ridiculously more powerful than wolf. It's also incredibly annoying how you get randomly punished severely by Rat when it dies last. The damage can go from 2 to 7! The only other minion that does something similar is Replicating Menace but only if the opponent stacks two of those in a single minion.
I was thinking the same thing actually. Rat pack scales way better that infested wolf so they should be switched.
Fun fact - I never once lost a game when playing as Millificent Manastorm. She will be missed.
By removing King Mukla, Giantfin & Millificent Manastorm it seems like they are favoring removing heroes that force you down a specific tribe, which begs the question, why did they not also remove Lord Jaraxxus?
A few of the remaining heroes need a desperate buff as well. For example, Pyramad & Queen Wagtoggle's powers have no significance in changing the outcome any of your results other than perhaps the first two rounds (where you don't have the gold spare to use your hero power anyway).
Moving Junkbot to tier 5 was an excellent decision, the games were often heavily influenced by who picked up a copy first.
However I feel they should also do something about Nightmare Amalgam. Either remove him, or at least move him to tier 3.
They removed 2 best and 2 worst acting heroes (by winrate). Tribe bound is not a reason.
TBH, I am liking where this mode is going.
I suppose slight sinergy boost