Can we please discuss Beasts in BGS?

Multiplayer Discussion
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As we have entered the beginning of the year and we all are going back to work including the devs, I write this with the hope we see a balance patch within the month. I know a lot of Standard/Wild players are hopeful for the same thing and could have a whole other discussion, but I’d like to address BGs, specifically Beasts.

I’d like to begin with saying I don’t mind losing a game. It happens. It’s part of playing competitive anything, so I’m not coming here frustrated after a loss I just had. However, I am tired of the Beast gameplay in its current state. Let me put it this way: I used to have the premium version of HSReplay’s BGs overlay, which showed me stats for Heroes. Now, I generally used this as sort of a guideline, but I never looked to see what was the highest placed hero. Most of the time, I’d still choose what I’d like to play. Remember how I said “used to have”? Well, I can say there’s almost ZERO point in having this premium version because EVERY TIME, if Beasts are in the lobby, they are Top of the list for best build for the Hero. Sure, you have some outliers like Alex or Ysera, but guess whose trailing right behind them build wise? Beasts.

Last patch before the holidays, there was an italicized text wherein the devs had a message preceding the changes to Heroes/Minion pool. They mention the meta “is in a healthy state”, the only over-performers are spell generators and they are going to buff a few tribes. Agan, “healthy state” and zero mention of Beasts. In fact, they gave Beasts a slight nudge of a buff with the Choose one Beast.

You know what minions they consider HEALTHY (apparently) for this meta? Goldrinn, Hawkstrider, and Slamma’. Pair those with Titus Rivendare or (help me) the friggin’ 3gold spell Titus’ Tribute (which has ZERO counter btw), you have yourself a dirty concoction of a build plaguing the meta the higher you climb.

Playing the build is absolutely mind-numbing, so I can never bring myself to touch it. I’d much rather lose trying to make something more interesting work than just grab and toss Beast cards onto the board without having to think about it. Not to mention it’s a big, straining eye roll when you play against it. It’s a build where if you look at your win% chance, it’s solely based on whether or not you hit the key pieces the majority of the time. Include the aforementioned spell, more than likely it’s just gg as you can’t snipe a spell, or at least they didn’t implement this into the game when they put the TT spell into the game.

I could go into grand detail of the minions and their combos, but it’s like this:

Hawkstrider: Free DR procs across the ENTIRE BOARD. Unbelievable. They could push it to T6 and it wouldn’t make a difference. That is a T7 power level at least.

Goldrinn: I actually like the new iteration of this card, but with Slamma’ still in the mix and Hawkstrider working the way it does, it’s way too strong.

Slamma’: It used to be a triple version of this is just insane power, but now you arguably only need one with all the other minions available for the build.

I’ve only mentioned the enablers that come to mind. Of course there are cards that exploit the power level of these cards very well, such as the Mech/Beast or the Beast summoned from hand, or Beast which can grand taunt or reborn to another Beast.

Beasts have a good early game, mid-game, and late game, so it doesn’t struggle a whole lot when it comes to getting into the Top 4 or solidifying a win, and, again, it doesn’t take much thought. You just need to know what pieces need to be on the board. Done. Finished. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING.

Tl; Dr Beasts are NOT in a healthy state, and I’d love to see some adjustments sooner than later.

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I can never find any of the minions you listed. Like ever. They just arent available ever. I can triple a Baron before I find any one of those minions. Let alone have the perfect RNG, Luck, and divine intervention from the Force, to have that combination of minions. Im lucky to find the raptor when Im beasts.

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Cramer,

When you click the Refresh button, what DOES appear in Bob’s shop? I’m at the point I believe you have an exclusive Bob skin giving you the finger as nothing happens except losing one gold when you try to refresh the shop.

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The funny part is that I dont think you are wrong. I got pretty far with beasts this time, all the way to tier 5. got 2 banana hammocks, a bear, and 2 raptors. but a lot of the time when i hit refresh I see mostly tier 1 and tier 2 minions no matter what tier I am on, and even when I do see any higher tier minions they are usually the one offs like the minion that gives a buff based on how many tribes you have on board, or the one that is only really meant for turn 1 to sell on 3, the 4/5 that loses its attack every turn. minions like that. Normally what occurs is I will have maybe the first 10 rounds give me such an eclectic variety of minions I couldnt even make a menagerie build that could really work together well. Sometimes I get lucky and can make a single golden minion nowadays. Didnt used to be that hard to come by but since the inclusion of spells, it has been a very very rare thing to happen.

I didnt even know the wolf had a name you;ve been calling it by. Only after having to look it up did I find that part out. But alas, I can go all the way to turn 12, struggled to get a full board (not all beasts but all of them Ive come across) and not have any above tier 4 despite my tier being 5 or even the rare 6. again, if Im lucky, I might have gotten to make 1 golden but chances are it was not generous with the choices I got to pick from. The only saving grace I get is maybe once or twice a game I will happen upon the spell that lets me pick a minion and get a random one of that tribe. Thats the only viable strat I have to fill out a tribe board of any flavor usually. But even while at Tier 6, I wont see any t6 or t5 at all. I might get lucky and see the occasional t4 maybe twice in a full 10 attempts at refreshing trying to improve my board in any way that doesnt leave it worse off if I sacrifice one and cant replace with a better stat/tech minion. And for instance the previous game I just went beasts, I was alone playing beasts, as the only other tribes picked by the other 5 people were all going murlocs. The other irksome thing I have terrible rng ever finding is ways to give my minions taunt ever, I might see the 1 cost spell in the first couple rounds but never again. and the starship troopers bug that gives reborn or taunt is also like a rare 1 off encounter per game.

Thats what I usually see/dont see in my average match. That latest beast run was an anomaly itself for me finding as many beasts as I did. And I surprisingly got to finish in 3rd in that match. Something that recently has also been uber rare as Ive been hard stuck at MMR of 4500-4550ish all season.

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My main problem with Beasts is they don’t have multiple pathways to being good like most other tribes. It’s gorilla shenanigans or bust. That isn’t fun to build into. The reason I’m excited to see Beasts in lobby is more or less only because of their tribe-agnostic Deathrattle synergy birds.

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Rhylak and Hawkstrider are the only Beasts I touch generally past turn 5 or so as they synergize with a lot of other tribes/builds.

Hawkstrider is still way too OP, tho

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I’m crying I’m laughing so hard at this.

The more likely answer is they’re a troll playing an act.

I just don’t even give them the time of day anymore - isn’t worth the hassle.

Most of the excremental scaling that happens right now is caused by those two units and I would like to see BOTH of them gone. Perma gone. Out.

Hitting those units with good battle cries is gamebreaking. It’s highroll or hang on.

I think the issues with beasts run deep, but hawkstrider causes issues in multiple tribes.

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We got into it a little on this. I just don’t offer any advice anymore as I lean that way as well.

Hoping to see some serious shake up with a patch in a couple weeks other wise BGs will likely go back to the back burner OR I’ll just concede every Beasts lobby and forego any thought of ranking up for a whole other season again…

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I’m a Beast enjoyer. I like me some chicken. So I definitely think hatred here is misplaced.

But let’s look at the situation rationally and dispassionately. If you look at what the stats say, they say Beasts are the top tribe and Pirates is near the bottom. If you look at what the pros say (specifically the video that Jeef recently put out), they say that Pirates are #2… but Beasts are #1. I take this as an indicator that Pirates are in a great place — they’re very hard to use, but top players who know how to use them can really make them work.

Beasts, however, are a little overpowered. They’re #1 if you’re low skill and they’re #1 if you’re high skill.

Now one of the major reasons that I’m a beast enjoyer is that I play on mobile phone. It’s very difficult for me to get everything I can out of APM builds. I understand that, from a game design perspective, APM is a high (highest, probably) skill mode because you have tons of choices to make and very low time per choice. Beasts are as close to the opposite of this. Just assemble your Exodia units and sit back casually. Minimum APM.

I don’t want Beasts nerfed to the point that they’re not viable anymore. I want them to continue to be an option for low APM play. But they absolutely need nerfing. Maybe not to the point that they’re no longer #1 among the low skill players, but at least to the point that they’re near the bottom of the list for people like Jeef.

So yes please nerf. But uh be gentle lol

I’d say just move Chicken to Tier 7. I’ll play Thorim when I see him, that’d be good enough for me.

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This is what causes my disparity. It’s auto-pilot to a T. Navigating takes little effort to do successfully and see great results.

I saw this video and I’ve seen Jeef play. Clearly on an entirely different level, so I have to say his tier list, though it may be accurate, is in an entirely different world MMR rank wise. Lobbies are different than those you may see below 8k.

I never thought of it this way before, and this thought scares me. I’ve been assuming the devs are hard pushing HS in its entirety towards mobile users, especially since Snap’s release. Faster games per Stand/Wild and in this case less apm.

Me neither. I’m not a fan of anything in this game getting such treatment, but it does need some adjustments as it’s polarizing the meta on every level.

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believe what you want to, but i’m always giving yall the authentic experiences that i “enjoy/endure” in the game. I dont engage in trolling. thats for aleksander and bobafett to do. I just complain that the game seems to essentially give me 1 dice with 5 blank sides and you all get full flawless yahtzee numbers of dice to play with. if you encountered the lack of key minions and spells and etc that I do you’d be irked like i almost always am.

believe what you will tho. it isnt my fault you lack the ability to understand that I just dont encounter those things, like, ever. feel free to spectate me in a game to see my options. youll see im consistently given nothing of any consequence and never any key minions of a tribe. since recording bgs isnt a thing hsreplay can do thats all the verification i can provide. i openly invite you to see i am not making a bit nor a troll. i am annoyed and overly irked by the shaft i seem to get tho…

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It’s more likely that you just don’t recognize the minions being offered, than that they aren’t available. You’re literally on record in these forums claiming that you don’t know which cards (Standard) and minions (BGs) exist.

And FWIW, this is the internet. We’re strangers. Nobody is forcing you to log in here and put your ignorance on display. You have Google to look things up. It’s totally fair to assume you’re either lying, trolling, or genuinely a moron. All three of those come before making personal accomodations for your anecdotes.

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I will, thank you. At the end of the day, the only thing I know of you is what you post. From what you’ve said/written, I’ve discerned:

  1. When you click Refresh, no minions appear on the board and Bob laughs at you like the Headless Horseman

  2. When offered advice from multiple posters here, you have a rebuttal all with the same flavor of, “Nuh uh. Don’t wanna. Can’t be bothered.” Then you proceed to complain about the same thing over and over and over and over.

I’m sorry, but even if your supposed intention is not trolling, you’ve built a reputation in the form of it.

Now, I know you hate advice and don’t take it, but I’ll say one more thing. If you’d like this image I at least have in my head, stop whining and start listening if you’re going to post your experiences here because it’s a friggin’ forum. We are all here to discuss.

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Listen, I do , remember, thats very different for me. Ive gone over it more than a few times already so I hesitate to rehash that again. but if you forgot, I can fully understand that feeling of forgetting without any intention to forget.

And from what youve written Ive discerned that you are very “I am holier than thou” vibes and just dont take anything anyone says at all for what they say it is. You have this wild and outlandish attitude of describing another persons experiences as , and I’ll use your words here,

I can appreciate the absurdist humor, but that isnt remotely an accurate depiction of what I encounter. Your dismissal of my tavern lobby choices is just flippant and overall rude. I accommodate a lot of yall here. I cant memorize things or google everything about the game every single time I forget something I googled before. Perhaps that is what you gathered when you said

I have forgotten more things and regoogled them to only forget them again minutes later. on things of genuinely no importance, such as games, I dont feel wrong in not engaging in that futility. you take your near perfect memory for granted and dismiss me and call me names for not having your identical scenario of brain chemistry going on.

I admit my faults, my limitations, and damn right I will complain about my experiences. I listen to what yall tell me to do, and if I am able to retain it I apply it. But I cannot be expected to remember the way you expect yourself to be able to. I am not any of you, and none of you are me. I fight a different uphill battle everytime I load any game at all, a difficulty mode none of you will hopefully never have to experience. I am not like some cartoonish fish from the Nemo movies but Im not that far away from how my memory retention actually is.

I repeat things, a lot. I dont have anything to say for that but Im sorry. I will probably continue to repeat myself and ask the same things Ive been given answers to. I dont expect you to have the resolve of a family member that can handle being told the same story more than a few times in a span of a half an hour and I have no idea Ive even discussed it recently at all. Im sorry for that and I dont hold any of you to that level of decency I hold my family to. I do however hope you would be decent. I cant help or modify my limitations, no amount of google or internet can change much about my issues. It wont matter if Ive googled something every day or several times in a day, if it isnt retaining it isnt retaining. If i could brute force it into my memory I would already be doing so my entire life. I have to bust out the calculator app and subtract my birthyear from the current year in order to answer the question “how old are you?” every time. Because if I go with my internal instinct I will say “28 or 30, not sure.” but in reality the calculator informs me I am currently 36 turning 37 in April. Thats a bit jarring to me every time.

I hope none of you ever have to experience brain chemistry the way I do, or a family member, etc. But it isnt that I cant be bothered to follow your advice, its that I genuinely have no memory youve given it to me. if there was a chat log like in the blizzard apps convos I can scroll back and see what Ive said back and forth with individuals such as Worriedcheese and Cheezuscrust, etc. but the forum? its nothing like that and so Im sorry if youve told me a thing in one thread, but dont be surprised if in another thread, or even later in the same one, I have no memory of that exchange. since I dont make it a habit to reread entire threads from the beginning to end every time I return to a thread, I wont have the collective knowledge of whats in it at each interaction. usually just whatever Ive just read that is past the little blue line that reads last visit.

But go on and believe as you intend to. All Ive ever asked for is to be treated decently, which means suspend your disbelief long enough to understand what Im complaining about and how what I encounter in the game isnt what you encounter. If thats too much to ask of strangers on the net, then so be it. I know I cannot reach the bar so many here have set which is encyclopedic knowledge and memorization of every card and every deck and every strategy and every motif of the game before daring to write anything on the forums.

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If you know this about yourself, make accommodations for strangers on the internet who are not predisposed to liking you. Manage your own expectations when dealing with others. Don’t make this anybody else’s problem.

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I havent to my knowledge ever asked anyone here to like me. If I have, again, no memory of ever asking that. Sorry.

I dont expect that of anyone and I would assume they dont expect that of me either.

Decency however, I do assume that others expect it of me. which is why I go out of my way to explain and be helpful where I can. I do ask that others be decent. As I dont think its that high a bar to reach no matter your level of skill in hearthstone. As I am of the camp that one doesnt need any skill in HS to be decent to another person.

I dont make my issue anyone else problem to have. I dont go around telling people to share my pain and feel my feelings and forget things the way I forget. Thats absurd. I do not make my problem anyone elses problem to share.

If asking decency of a person is somehow making a problem for them, then I dont have a response to that. Other than I think thats just a failing of a lot of things at the same time, primarily a thing called humanity, but others as well.

I dont expect anyone to understand my memory issues, there are some Ive spoken to that have family that share similar memory impairments and they have expressed the amount of patience and have told me the number of times that patience has been tested even for them. I know it must be trying at times and I dont wish that tryig of patience on anyone here. However I cannot pre-emptively accommodate for that in a meaningful way that isnt just “re-do my brain chemistry to make me not forget anymore”… so Im unsure exactly what you suggest I do.

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Why bother playing anything if that’s the case? Do you enjoy having something to complain about or something?

This is the kind of thing that makes you feel more like a troll than someone with a genuine experience/frustration. Again, this is what you are putting out there.

If it’s an actual medical issue, I can sympathize, but I find it hard to believe given this is the first time it’s been mentioned after SEVERAL posts.

We did. We gave advice…

It doesn’t require this.

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I have gone over my memory issues on more than a number of occasions, but you are correct, it is the first time in this thread. I try not to rehash it into every thread I engage in but it does pop up on a number of occasions because of a common denominator being my ability to remember things and others not understanding how I cant possibly know a thing. Ranging from not knowing a card by name, but instead I am better able to retain what the card does so I will often describe it thusly. There are other ways I can remember things like in Beasts Tribe there arent a lot of repeat beasts, so its very easy to recall there is a raptor, bear, rat, wolf, tentacle monster, so when someone goes spouting the proper names of these in a thread, naturally I havent an idea what they are saying without the need to google it up to be reminded that [googling the name right now] Goldrinn = wolf. but prior to the moment where I jsut had to google it for this moment, that connection wasnt there. I recall a bit ago I went thru the same realization in another thread where I had to google the name itself first to find out they were saying “the Wolf” anytime they were saying “Goldrinn”. I dont expect this to be the last time I have to google that relationship of the name to animal when i encounter others speaking about it in threads, something many would take for granted and if ever they needed to google it, only once is more than enough for them.

I wish that were true for me too.

as for giving advice, forgive me for my gap in memory but I dont recall anything specific as far as “advice given” and I know thats on me and not you. I dont hold you in any way at fault for my own faulty recollections. But i can say Im sorry, but I just remember what advice you are referring to.

I genuinely cannot recall the last time anyone gave me any advice here, however I do have an expectation that I am 100% wrong about that. I liken it to a computer that doesnt save a file properly, so later when you try to resume something where you left off, my brain goes “File Not Found”. Which is frustrating to all involved. It isnt that the computer is being malicious by not saving the file, or negligent in it because it doesnt care if it retains it or not. It is just a fault in the computer that is frustrating. No motivation can be applied to it when it happens tho.

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You’re implying it’s an actual medical issue. Like, you’ve been diagnosed? What’s it called? I’m actually curious.

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If I could afford to ever see a doctor Id like to know too. I can;t afford to go to a ER Clinic let alone get a non ER doctor appointment. but thats a whole can of worms that isnt really the answer to what you are asking. Just know I have gone to a doctor/hospital a total of 2 times since turning 18 and they were all when a family member were admitted, not for myself. First was when my girlfriend gave birth to what at the time I believed to be my son, which was around 12-13 years ago. The other was this christmas eve when my stepdad fell and I had to call 911 for assistance to help get him up off the ground, EMT made the call to admit him. I was in the ER lobby from about 7pm xmas eve to about 5 am xmas day. The last time I went to the hospital for myself was after I fell in the shower and awoke hours later to a super cold water shower as the hot water had run out, along with the pain of my whole head throbbing from what was assumed to be from the fall. nothing was diagnosed that night other than my urine test came back with THC being positive but the doc knew that didnt have anything to do with why I was in there. This was when I was either 16 or 17, not precisely sure on that detail. I was in High school that I am sure of timing wise.

At this point in life the I had only one symptom of my current memory issues and that hadnt been identified as a symptom yet. Since elementary school I could not memorize the multiplication tables. To this day I can only mutter off the simplest of them such as the 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s. The rest I have to figure em out on paper or grab a calculator. All thru school everyone just assumed I was lazy or stupid when it came to math class as I couldnt do most of the things in my head or recite things like multiples of a number or factors to a number. I absolutely flunked the portion of Algebra about "Foil"ing. None of it made any sense at all. But at the time of this hospital visit of my own the concept of asking the doc to diagnose my bad memory wasnt even an atom of an idea in my mind to ask.

Im not gonna apply a name to my issue as Im not qualified to Web MD diagnose myself. All I can feel comfortable doing is just to express what I experience and acknowledge my limitations. What it is I have is for a professional to assess, and unfortunately for me, is well beyond my means to be able to get to see.