Battlegrounds advice

Multiplayer Discussion
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I just wanna make a little outlet here to seek advice on how to improve at Battlegrounds. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but since the last patch I am losing games left and right. I was over 7k when the patch hit and I am down to 6.2k. I feel like I will roll back to 6k soon at this rate and I am not really able to identify what I do wrong.

Most games I play my early game for tempo and stats while I figure out what tribe or comp I should pursue given my opponents’ choices and what I am given in the tavern, yet everyone else keeps getting boards that completely kick my butt before I have a chance to build a decent strat. Sometimes I feel like I managed to build up something really promising and suddenly I face someone with a ridiculous board for the turn we’re in and I get hit for 15 at the worst possible moment, which eventually leads to my death. I am not going to blame anything other than myself, really, but I am at a loss as to what I am doing wrong to lose so much rating recently, so I could take some advice.

I have tried watching some streamers, but watching streams is not something I have the time or will to do right now. And I don’t really learn that much watching them since their APM is so fast that most of the time I have no clue what they’re doing or why. Most valuable lesson I have learned from watching is that amalgam minions are a lot more powerful than I realized. But that’s not a piece of knowledge I can always take advantage of.

So, tldr, what’s the best advice you can give in order to improve?

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The Rating isn’t a quality indicator of your skill because they don’t match by Rating but by MMR. That means this month might be more competitive for some reason and don’t forget late in the season rating is easier than early in the season,

because Rating is the MOST bogus indicator of skill at the start of the month because we all start at ZERO.

PS lol @ the saying “6000 rating is not legend”, I’ve gone legend in the past faster than BG 5500.

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MMR isn’t reset, Rating is.

It’s statistically in the middle. Legend is not the middle.

It’s hilariously easy to get 6k.

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Logically, 6k must be the equivalent to D5. It’s the end of the ladder floors, which means you will eventually always reach it if you play enough time and are not completely clueless (compared to the average player). My personal experience is that 6k is D5 and reaching 7k feels like hitting legend. Anyways it’s a meaningless comparison.

That said, let’s discuss advice please :pray:t3:

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It really isn’t though because of how the rating works.

In constructed, you win or lose, but in BG four people win each game.

6k is very much middle of the pack. Find out whatever the middle of ladder is population wise and that’s what 6k is.

I know people don’t want to hear that they are actually average players, but that’s how the world works… we aren’t all above average because that’s impossible.

I think if you can’t sit through streams, go look at their endgame comps and their trinkets to study the possibilities in this meta.

There are a TON of combinations right now and many of them are less obvious than “make a big board of elementals” like past versions of the game. It’s much more subtle and complex. People are going infinite with a combination of naga and pirates and spells and making four digit sized boards in less than 12 turns… that’s not what we had in the past and people are sleeping on the game a bunch right now.

If you feel comfortable there, then slow down the streams or vids to the middle and focus on what and how and when the best players move to their end game builds. That’s a critical part that hangs people up. I’m not good at it right now… it’s why I’m constantly 3, 4, 5, and rarely hitting 1 or 2 right now… I’m behind coming out of the mid game.

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Im with ya chapuzo i got to 7450 and am now down to 6.7k. I have no advice though a lot of games boil down to what trinket ya get. Oh wait here is sime advice Id say never play for first but for 3rd and 4th
Edit: though i make the mistake and still play while distracted so that couod be paet kf the problem.

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Well I really think D5 is middle of the pack in Standard as well for similar reasons. While it’s true in battlegrounds all 4 at the top win, average game length is also multiple times longer, so median games played per week must be much much lower than Standard. I’d say a D5-6000k comparison is fair. Maybe I’m wrong tho.

Ah yeah I am very comfortable admitting I am very much an average BGs player tbh. I have enough self-esteem to think I could be above average with a little effort and curiosity tho, but I am clearly not there yet :smile:

That makes a lot of sense actually. I need to do some research on different comps and see if I can expand the range of possibilities I am considering. That’s probably a huge bottleneck to my decision-making. Thanks!!

Edit: is there some kind of resource where I could explore end game comps in BGs? Tracker websites and the like maybe?

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It’s not, though. D5 is top 25% maybe? It’s much higher than it would seem from the traffic around here where nearly everyone tells you they’re top 1k legend. I’d have to go look up the last time they published this stuff.

I know I’m not comfortable enough with enough tribes and builds right now, too. I don’t know where to look that up other than watching streams or youtube and just looking at what the best are doing/copying what beats you. Maybe screen shot odd builds you see to go back later and unravel what was happening.

Edit: The approximate middle of the chart at the end of the month is in platinum ranking, so 6k is closer to platinum than diamond or legend. Diamond ranking is closer to 7k bgs

Rank distribution over time | Standard | Feb 2024 | Firestone : r/hearthstone

And realize that this is firestone data, so it’s likely very skewed to show more serious players, so the average is likely firmly in platinum.

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Quoted For Truth.

“Average” is a term that is necessarily relative to what you are assessing. Modern society (especially western ones like USA where I live) gives us the expectation that we SHOULD be superlative, or else we’re “failing” in some regard. My opinion is that this is a byproduct of the “never settle / always be productive” message we’ve been fed for several successive generations.

Turns out, “you can be / do anything you want” is not true when it comes to being ahead of the curve on all things at all times. And no matter what capitalism bros may tell you contrarily, human beings are NOT biologically designed to always be even net useful, let alone “highly productive.” Sometimes, we need a nap. Them’s the breaks.

What this means with HS, and specifically BG’s, is that most of us, by literal definition, are going to be “average at best.” We may all be very smart! We may be highly skilled in other things and in other games or even other aspects of THIS game or even relative to DIFFERENT crowds of people at different times within this game.

But we’re not always going to be awesome, and we SHOULD, in my opinion, move towards normalizing that. We really ought to remember that sometimes (often!), it’s okay to just be okay.

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I think all of that is true, but the thing is, Hearthstone, as most things, is a skill. And most skills, if not all, can be honed with time, effort and a little dedication. There’s a degree of inherent capacity involved obviously, but what separates the average player from a good or even an excellent player is just dedication, nothing biological or pre-determined.

I am probably at the point where any other average player would get to without putting effort into it and just playing the way it is most immediately obvious to play. If I want to become anything better than an average player, I’d need advice and learn from people better than me; which why I decided to open this thread :slight_smile:

And in that note, I have lost all 3 games I played since I opened this so I am still performing terribly poorly :melting_face:

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Insert sad trombone sound here . :slight_smile:

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It’s interesting how many of you do this basic mistake, probably because you are starstruck by the word “Legendary”.

D5 is not the final floor but Legend is the final floor just as 6000 is the final floor.

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I think that (a little above) D5 is around median near the end of a month and that (a little above) 6k is median for the end of a season. I think that if Ranked reset as infrequently as BGs then the median would be bottom Legend instead of Diamond, but Ranked doesn’t reset like that.

I think it’s important to remember that the average rank isn’t some static thing, it’s a moving target.

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Its very common to get hit with 15 dmg back to back for some reason or another around like rounds 7-10… people make impossibly scaled boards that arent possible when I try them. Im constantly going quillboars and i can maybe reach the low 30/30s but i end up losing to someone reaching the multiple 100/100s or higher. it just isnt possible for my matches for me to scale like that. and I dont get how they are doing it either

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The first thing to note is that every single match is different. Yes, certain tribes like Quilboars are in each game, and certain ones are out, but simply having them as options doesn’t mean they’ll be options for YOU. And I do mean that quite literally, as in, you personally might literally might never get the key minions.

So it’s important to look at the tribes and be aware of what COULD be available, but you really, REALLY don’t want to “commit” prior to your first trinket choice unless you happen to be RNG’ing in to the nuts draws for said tribe. Like, if Demons are in and you get the soul combo back to back, then okay, sure, probably at least buy them just to have them. But if Demons are in, and you’re getting NO demons? Buy whatever IS there. You want to avoid taking chip damage, so establish a board regardless of tribes.

And of course, if you NEVER get the key minions for ANY tribe? Then you have to hope you get a DAMN good menagerie trinket. Or, you may well just lose. And that’s another thing to keep in mind: RNG-based choices mean sometimes, you WILL be put into an unwinnable situation. It doesn’t happen often, and as your skill and knowledge improve, you’ll find that many things you previously thought were “unwinnable” were instead simply “difficult to win with.” But it can still be a thing where you get NOTHING good and you just end up dying. It happens occasionally.

Next thing to note is how to scale vs how to scam. It doesn’t matter how beefy their stat sticks are, there are ways around it. Venomous, aoe, Leeroy, infinite (or near infinite) death-rattles. But, scams are harder to set up than scaling stats. Know which minions lead to what outcomes.

Trinkets. Trinkets can make-or-break a run, I’m realizing that now as I progress in my MMR. The ones that give you “X minion at the start of every turn” are INCREDIBLY powerful. Absolute WORST case scenario, it’s a free gold. WORST case. Often it will be a tribal that you are already leaning towards, but even if it makes you pivot, you’ll likely get battle cries and other reasons to play those minions. Ones to avoid would be “delayed effect” ones because while you’re waiting 3 turns to get your “doubled greater trinket” or “goldenizer” everyone ELSE is getting benefits NOW. Tempo in BG’s is measured in rounds, instead of trades like it is in other modes. A turn you waste “doing nothing” is a turn I’m using to close the gap, or even pull ahead.

Armor. Picking a hero with high armor matters WAY more than I think it should. When I look at most of my losses, it’s because I went for that “interesting power” choice that starts at like 7 armor. Most of my wins are when I go with someone who starts with 17. That’s the difference one more turn of breathing room can give you.

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I think the vast majority of BG players don’t reach 6000 or higher. It may be not that hard to get there, but it also takes time. Don’t confuse your own skill with the average player. If you are at least a bit dedicated to BG, then you will be above the average player.

Same goes for standard. I’ve seen statistics in the past and you’d be surprised to see that the vast majority of players are gold or lower.

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Not so much this past patch but the patch before that added all the extra trinkets was a huge shock to the system. On that patch i lost about 650 rating pts just learning it for the first week. The trinket pool was diluted with more trinkets that you really have to know how to use instead of obvious OP picks. APM builds also became more prevalent although they still lag a bit behind some of the easier tribes to scale with with.

If you are still having trouble in this meta my advice would be to make a solid board before the first trinket and don’t worry about trying to get a specific trinket off the minions you have. Chances are you won’t get it anyway. Just pair up what you get as best you can with whatever tempo you have started and go for a build that the greater trinket will be better with. Most of the minor trinkets are universal in builds outside of a select few.

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People are scared of the word “Legend” and they are starstruck by it so they overrate it in this context and make illogical thoughts about it. E.g. we have several players in this forum thinking that the floor of constructed is D5 and therefore 6000 is not equivalent.

The floor of constructed is absolutely Legend and they can’t see that because they are so in love with the word Legend while the “dull” 6000 can’t possibly be the equivalent floor.

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It’s not tho. Unlike the normal ladder system, legend uses a ranking system. This ranking has no floor (maybe technically the last person in the ranking). You can’t demote from legend because people would find it unfair but a huge chunk of people in legend are actually still below D1 in terms of MMR, or even lower, and therefore they face the same people they were facing in D5-D1, because this is where the bulk of the average competitive player is funneled into by the floor and bonus star system. These players are legend in name only because they haven’t actually progressed further from Diamond level of competition.

Battlegrounds has a rating system throughout, so there’s no point at which your rating is known as legend. However, since it also has bonus points and rating floors, the same funnel effect happens above the 6k mark, and this is where the bulk of average players playing long enough converge to. That is why, logically, somewhere around 6k should be equivalent to D5 in terms of ladder competitiveness. As happens in legend, going beyond this tip of the funnel and progressing further to maintain a higher rating consistently is where the real challenge is.

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You are doing “moving the goalposts” with extra steps. You said yourself the rank floors at Legend.

Also talking about MMR is a total double standard since 6000 can have a low MMR too.

OK I WILL concede to one thing but it’s not like you brought it as an argument,

we are partly doing “apples and oranges” because Legend has a sub-rank.