Firstly, as a long time battlegrounds player, I want to commend the HS team on a truly incredible patch! The amount of effort it takes to rework a game mode in such a profound way is staggering, and you guys did it under some of the worst circumstances given everything going on at Blizz right now. Bravo!
As much as I love the madness and unique builds that Buddies bring when they come around, I am so far absolutely loving the rework. Poisons have been a problem for a long time and have needed better mechanisms to counter them, so converting that to the new Venomous mechanic is great! There are many things I love about this patch so far and without going into each example, I want to simply say that I am loving how there was a clear intention to avoid metas. Battlegrounds is at its best when it urges players to adapt to a dynamic lobby and find ways to counter their opponents builds. In my opinion, this is what makes Battlegrounds the most exciting mode in the game. The fact that a single lucky card can turn the tide or seal your fate. This new patch does a phenomenal job of creating synergies that encourage players to be BOTH strategic and adaptive. No one card is so necessary that its absence prevents your board from succeeding. Every tribe has cards that synergize with many different builds.
All that being said…there is one card that is currently creating a meta that depending on the hero playing it, is causing nearly insurmountable power scaling at minimal risk. It is creating boards that are clearly overpowered compared to other builds and thus forcing people to attempt to make the same build to survive as it is not currently easily counterable, and that card is the Felstomper.
With so many early and mid-tier cards able to summon minions to the board, having a Felstomper allows even otherwise weak boards to easily overpower opponents that were seeking out effective and diverse builds to set them up in the end game. This is causing a dynamic in almost every lobby where players rush to tier 6 to get a Felstomper then essentially just crush everyone with low tier taunt/summon minions to clear out the lobby before anyone has a chance to match them.
With limited windfury, no dynamic to prevent summons, no cleaves yet, and limited capabilities of divine shields, there are no readily available countermeasures to such blatant scam tactic, it is creating a meta that rewards only players lucky enough to get their Felstomper first. This is much akin to the “Mid-range Demons” build that made playing against Demon players frustrating until that was recently removed (thank the Old Gods).
I see the Felstomper as having an important role down the line when there are more readily available means of countering it, but please…until all tribes and all cards are available, remove it from the minion pool so we can enjoy finding new synergies with these new cards instead of having to attempt the same “low-tier summoner” build every lobby in order to succeed.
