Battlegrounds Tier Lists - Top 15 Battlegrounds Rank EU
Some days after the latest Battlegrounds Balance Patch several players in the top 15 of the Battlegrounds rankings in Europe weighed in with tierlists or their comments on them.
First up a Tier list by Team Liquid's Sjow, slated to appear in the upcoming Blizzard organized Battlegrounds event "Battlegrounds Brawl" tomorrow, June 23rd. This event features some of the most prominent names in Hearthstone Battlegrounds as well as a slew of Hearthstone content creators who love the format.
Sjow's Tier List
Sjow's list seems to confirm early community feelings and data the community has put together and seems a very solid list of how to rank the Heroes currently.
- Captain Eudora
- Captain Hooktusk
- Arch-villain Rafaam
- Kael'thas Sunstrider
- Nozdormu
- Yogg-Saron
Xixo's Tier List
Xixo had a slightly more humorous approach to the Tier list, as seen below, saying that the D rank was in random order.
Though meant to poke fun, the list definitely had it's merits too. Grandmaster RDU, who boosted his own Battlegrounds score to above 14k and into the EU Top 15 in anticipation of the Battlegrounds Brawl event, tweeted a response to the list, saying "Classic Xixo but he's not wrong" as well as adding later, in response to the unusually high rank of Maiev on the list "she just got buffed, I like her too but too soon to say if she's top5".
- Captain Hooktusk
- Maiev Shadowsong
- Captain Eudora
- Arch-villain Rafaam
- Yogg-saron
- Kael'thas Sunstrider
- Sir Finley Mrrggllton
S = Superior
My personal take:
S - over the top hero´s that almost always can carry you to top 4
A - strong hero´s that can go wrong some times, but mostly give you good games
B - Average hero that can give you a 50/50 chance of a good or bad game
C - hero´s that depend on specific condition to get good us of their hero powers, so they tend to struggle sometimes, but they still can get really good games
D - Hero´s that a directly a lot weaker than the others or their hero power are really irrelevant
Is Aranna really that weak, she seems such powerful.
She is. It's just Sjow's opinion.
I don't think she's one of the best heroes, but she's probably in that low-B to C tier. I don't think she's necessarily worse than Millie, Reno, or Ysera, for example.
I think she's decent, she also is a bit harder to play. You have to have a definite strategy in mind and not all strategies are equal with her. You also have to learn how fast to HP with her. definitely high skill, for good but not top outcomes.
There's a lot of overpicking with her, and a lot of poor results. Is this structural, or is it just folks trying out a new hero who they don't understand and making mistakes? Probably some of both.
With the Saurolisk nerf, staying low tier isn't quite as good anymore. Meanwhile, Aranna has an odd hero power which doesn't work in the early game, comes online in the middle game, but drops off in the late game. She's got to invest in a lot of rerolls to get those extra minions, so she won't have it active for a while, unless she skips buys, which is a big disadvantage. Then, once she's on-line, it's not bad. At Tavern Tier 4, she sees 2 extra minions per refresh, which is is 2/5th of a free roll. That'll add up fast between hitting the button a few times, and the start-of-turn spread. That's almost Nozdormu. BUT, and it's a big one...
She doesn't help the early turns like Noz, and being able to roll for tokens, or get an instant roll after you tavern up (on 4 gold, or later) is also really powerful. Meanwhile, if she levels up to tavern 6, she'll only be seeing 1 extra minion, so that's only 1/6th of free roll, which is a lot worse. I suppose that if she's rolling down for only 1 minion, if you roll 5 times (plus initial refresh) that's like a free reroll. But it's still going from seeing 40% more minions to 17% more minions--more than half her value drops away.