Battlegrounds aren't skill based, it is pure luck

There is another glaring issue with this game. Hero choice makes too much of a difference. You have hero’s like Gally, and then a hero like Tavish. How do you look at that and say “Yea, that’s fair.” It is like someones mentally challenged brother came into the office and designed a hero on the same day an actual game designer made Gally. Hero’s are so polarizing in power that it almost isn’t worth playing some hero’s at all. If you get offered all F tier hero’s, you might as well not even waste your time if you get a garbage list of quests, and even then you are most likely getting fourth place or worse.

The game design when it comes to quests and hero disparity is atrocious. Makes me wonder if they even have game designers on the pay roll, because no one can be this bad at designing heroes unless it is on purpose.

So in a world without quests, I agree with you that imba heroes is the worst aspect of this mode, and that problem was made infinitely worse when they hard paywalled four hero choices.

But in the quest meta, the differences in speed of quest completion for middling heroes makes the quite often better than heroes with stronger innate hero powers.

I’m going to be able to spend 35 gold long before 75 gold, and the differences in armor tiers can be that big or more.

Tavish, in the current meta, is fantastic because his hero power is valuable early in the game and his quests are comparatively fast to complete. I would take him over omu in the current meta.

I havent picked omu in a very long time. Tavish neither but i can see tavish beeing decent (though even with a high armor hero you can still get hard quest requirements. There is also a random element in the requirement outside of the heros armor).

Omu always was a bit iffy and risky. If you dont get a token on 1 he is not that great and one token isnt realy enough,you kinda need two else you will still need to sell a minion on tavern 2.
You can stay on one till 7 gold but that curve isnt very popular anymore and it still needs a token within the first 3 turns to make the 5 gold turn good.

They put the hero stats behind a paywall now on replaynet so i am not sure how good or bad he actually is. Maybe he is decent still.

Gally is good with 0 armor and also a lot of fun. You need the game to work along a little bit but more often then not you can get something going.

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I saw this recently and was disappointed.

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This is not true.
You are just observing the surviving players at the top. It’s natural section.

For example, play paper rock in a tournament and you will always find the winner with perfect matches. One will survive, with no skill proven necessary.

Same here. Even the top 10 Hearthstone champions change every year.

Go look at the Battlegrounds leaderboards for Waterloooo (I forget how many Os). All seasons. The top BGs players do NOT change every year. That is, they don’t change enough to believe that the game is less than 90% skill.

Please keep in mind that chess leaderboards change over time and that game is 0% luck.

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I can agree with you on Hero inbalance. It’s why there was so much uproar over the BG pass and calling it P2W. Heros are not balanced.

That sounds so dirty

My favorite is APM pirates with Gally

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About half the heroes need an armor bump and a handful just need their hero power redesigned. That doesn’t mean they are unplayable they are just very unfriendly to new players or those still trying to understand all the games nuances. A couple minions could use a tier adjustment as well.

Otherwise the meta seems very good and super playable. I kind of wish for newer players they raised the floor ranks to 9 or 10K. You really don’t start learning about your end game builds and 5 and 6 drop tech till 6500+ rank and it can be frustrating losing huge MMR pts for newer players learning those skills. It won’t effect top players and goes a long way to the new player base IMO.

Good choice, I’ve played it since it first was released, always losing battles where I’m 80-90% favored. No skills whatsoever, enough is enough now for me.

It comes down to… Yes, there are varying levels of player skill. But, once you are playing at your player skill, it become a matter of pure luck. I can win pretty easily at the 6-7k rating because my skill level is a bit above. But, at the 8-9k+ rating I can go back and forth from 1st to last nonstop because it’s just a matter of luck.

Checks out.

Nope.

Not when there are players waaaay above your level. Luck has a role, but you can’t drop skill when you hit your own ceiling.

if there are players at 8k playing way below their skill level, then how do you say that their skill is higher? Are 8k players matched up with 10k players?

I can’t speak to how wide the bands are, but it’s very likely that, yes, there are 10k players in your lobby at times.

But the wider issue is you would still be climbing like you did at 7k if you were not at a skill ceiling. The top 1% of players is well over 11k at this point in the season.

And my point is that you can’t call your winning skill and your losing bad luck in the same post.

I said when I can toggle back and forth from 1st to last place nonstop, then it is luck making the difference, not skill. I don’t do that at 7k. If you can no longer attain 1st place, you are probably playing above your skill .

You can’t do it, but others can. That means you’ve hit a skill cap not a luck streak.

It’s your limit, not a game limit.

Well considering the top players are currently 16K+ then yes pairing down/up happens and it can be significant pairing down/up depending on the players in the pool at the time of the game forming.

There’s ways to see what a players score is in a lobby if you really want to know. I have seen players between 2-5k above/below me in a lobby already and in multiples. I’ve seen players in the 15K range end up in lobbies with players with 9K scores.

The upside of getting into a lobby with higher score players is that you score a bit better if you beat them. IF you are a higher score player though and you have too many low end players in your lobby you will lose points or not get as much as normal. It gets more extreme as you advance up the ranks. Players in the 15K+ range don’t generally get points to their score unless they get first or second.

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How can you see a players rating at start?

There’s some addons and twitch has a setup you can do commands to see a players current ranking. Beyond that you can see the top 2K players on the HS site under the BG’s menu top players.

It’s not a big deal because it really doesn’t tell you much about players. Top players use it mostly to see how much ranking they could potentially lose with too many low score players in a lobby.

This fellow made them searchable, and you can see more than the top 2k - you can see everyone.

Hearthstone Battlegrounds - Leaderboards | Tableau Public

There’s some lag between the blizz leaderboards and the searchable one, so they don’t perfectly line up.

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