I have played HS off and on since launch. Battlegrounds are my favorite addition to the game, and I have LOVED playing them the past few months… until pirates.
The new update has, in my opinion, destroyed the format of battlegrounds.
It doesn’t feel anything other than broken.Only one of the new heroes added in pirates is worth playing, and as such the rest served to make the existing, overperforming heroes stronger by further diluting the pool of heroes. It is great when you topdeck awesome with a good hero, but when you’re offered one underperforming hero and three losing heroes out of the badly lopsided hero pool, it’s a waste of time.
As if the broken hero power disparity wasn’t enough, you now have cards that have HERO POWER level buffs (bartendotron reduces cost of tiers … now pirates will give it to everyone - multiple times; giving back a gold when you buy a pirate is similar to milhouse’s lowered cost, etc.), and this power change is rng based. This manipulation of the coins and tiers makes for some brutal games that feel wrong/unfun/unfair in a “really wasn’t anything I could have done to stop that” way (I am looking at you, parrots).
The power creep of some of these cards that synergize in just too strong a way with other cards (both new and existing) has ruined the balance (what balance there was, at least) in this game mode, and I am starting to question if any of the developers even play this game.
So, ya, one opinion. I am sure there are eleventy billion more who disagree, but those are my thoughts, fwiw.
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yea, BG is unplayable right now
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How about Golden Macaw Goldrinn? Nadina Razergore dragons? Divine Mechs and Murlocs? Just remember to git gud!
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beasts megabuff was a great build when It required a 2 goldrin a golden exploding ghoul, a barron (maybe golden) and a deathrattle devine shield, its no fun when they put that combo on a single card
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I could not agree more. I enjoyed BG a lot until the last update. I’ve now decided to leave the game mode alone until pirates are removed or nerved.
While there are still some perfect builds like poison divine shield murloc that can win, in the majority of the games there is one build that rules them all as the power level is already great from the lower tiers and just increases as we move up the tiers.
I already disliked that you need to make a 80+ euro pre-purchase just to get to choose from 4 heroes. (as this was one of the few game modes for FTP players) With the pool of viable heroes already being small, getting to pick from 2 is already a major disadvantage.
And the damage output is just… well. Let’s just say I’ve lost multiple games with health over 30 in one hit (with decent boards, ending 2nd or 3th place myself) And won that way as well btw. All my wins since the update have been with pirate builds but it’s just no fun.
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Honestly not even sure what the best build is atm between murlocs, pirates, beasts and dragons which of course is a good thing:)
reason why you see so many pirates win atm is because everyone is forcing it because it’s new!
Also in regards to the new heroes, patches is great, so is the one where you can switch a minion with one from a lower tier for free. Not sure about the one that gains one gold each round, got it to work once with murlocs where I skipped from t4-6 in one round! Only tried the new DH once, but having a hard time seeing it not being viable as 7 minions to choose from is huuuge!
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This is not because of balance, this is because the game has become one massive highroll. Yes, murlocs and dragons are still king endgame, good luck getting to endgame now with those two. Pirates and macaw beast/deathrattle win or lose by who goes first. The entire game goes to a single coin toss now most of the time.
In the past, it might look like if you lose, you take 10 damage most, if you win, you deal 15 most. Now it is if you lose, you take upwards of 30, but if you win, you inflict upwards of 30. The literal variance is ridiculous, and kills the point of skill. Pirates and the tempo from macaw beast has caused the midgame damage to go from 6-12, to something in the range of 12-30. It doesn’t matter how good you are, face someone who highrolled bs? You lose the entire game. Pirates should not do so much freaking damage, either nerf some of the higher tier stuff, move stuff higher tier, or something, but taking 20+ damage midgame is game breaking.
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Same has been told about dragons, but at the end of the day still DS/poison murlocs win that all
Battlegrounds was the mode that bought me back to Hearthstone and I really liked it, but I agree with the OP. This patch has just destroyed the fun in playing.
The damage you take in a loss is way too much, if you have a few bad rounds you’re pretty much done. The other thing I have noticed is that if you start losing rounds you get matched with the top 3 one after the other. Its as if Blizzard wants to weed you out faster because you’re weaker. It’s getting to the point where I can predict the player I’m going to play next due to the previous round.
The other thing that has ruined this mode is to the auto attack first minions . . . Whelps, Jugglers,Arcane Cannons and some of the pirates. There is nothing like sitting there watching your tribe get wiped out before your turn has even started. Then you add Illidan to the mix and your round is over before it even started and here comes 20 points of the damage for you.
This mode used to be fun where you could experiment with some trial and error and still have a chance to have a decent run and sometimes you would run into a opponent that had gotten the god draw and had that insane tribe. But now its every game that multiple players have these insane tribe so much earlier.
I dont know, its been rough and I have completely given up on building my MMR, granted it doesn’t matter at all but its kinda sad to see blizzard tank this game as they have been for the past couple of years.
But I’m still playing . . . no idea why.
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The most powerful build of every tribe is insane:
Pirates: 100/100 APM Salty Looters and Gold Grubbers.
Murlocs: Megasaur Brann Divine Poison Murlocs.
Beast: Goldrinn Mama Bear Rat Cleave (since Macaw is in the Pirate bundle, actually).
Dragon: Double Nadina Razorgore 100/100 Dragons.
Mechs: Bomb Deflect-o-Bot Mechano-Egg Kangor Baron
Demons: 100/100 Wrath Weaver 12/20 Imp Mama Double Golden Soul Juggler Fiendish Servant Floating Watcher
And specials
Khadgar: The Ultimate Tidehunter and Tabbycat, ultimate Arcane Cannon
Lightfang: Ultimate Menagerie
Murloc is still the king of BG.
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Not really, double Nadina dragons can sometimes handle it.
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Frankly I don’t see how Pirates “destroyed” BG. They are fun and balance. And they are hardly a winning comp. Top 3 no issue with some good roll, but you have to pull a godlike build to win. And if you talking about the free money APM build like this http://www.noelshack.com/2020-26-3-1592956220-capture-d-ecran-71.jpg I managed to pull it only twice since the patch and saw it once otherwise. The money you get while playing pirate is their only way to stack stats. They have only a single buff, so you got to rely on Salty Looter and Goldgrubber to hope to be fat enough for the late game. And you have to buy TONS of pirates to make them relevant, aka the need of money. And you will still draw to a full board of 1/1 poisonous murloc. They are the new demons but really more fun. And the Freedealing Gambler is a really great unit that improve the economic part of the game for every heroes. It’s good to be able to invest and get rewarded after.
Beast has finally a decent build (maybe to easy to do and too punishing). Murloc is still the god of the endgame but is way too hard to do to hope climbing with them. Pirates are fun and can win sometimes. Dragon are competitve. Demon and Mech are struggling a bit but we’ve seen enough of them in previous patchs and on a incredibly lucky day you may win. I’m glad that we are back to “get big or get rekt”. Murloc DS/poisonous is winning 1 out 10 games lately so on every other game biggest stats win and almost every tribe can do it.
This patch is really balanced “tribely” speaking. Only issue is the difference of power level between good and bad heroes which a bit too much. Yes the damage are a bit too high too fast but it will be hard to fix that part. Taking 25 dmg in a single round out of nowhere because the opponent highrolled is frustrating but I have no answer for that.
I was done playing BG after the Cobalt war. Pirates brought me back. Every tribe has a chance, luck still take too much place but it’s HS, what can you do about it.
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it seems as if some must be freshly coming back to BGs; the stuff you guys are talking about has BEEN THAT WAY. BGs started ramping up the damage per round well before Pirates were introduced (when Dragons came in) and more and more players at that time were able to gather a pretty decent comp going into the later rounds than before.
this is due to the mode being out longer and people getting better at the game as well as the slow drip introduction of new tribes and additional units.
whenever a new tribe and new heroes come into the game, a whole host of complainers unwilling to change up the way they play come to the forums to whine about how ‘unfair’ BGs are with RNG, as if this is their first time trying the mode or something.
i hate to be that stereotype, but GIT. GUD. get used to this game mode changing on the regular and adapt with the changes or stop playing. the mode itself hasn’t changed fundamentally.
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I cannot understand if this thread is serious or a joke. For real pirates have been the best thing in battlegrounds. Sure the macaw sh*t is broken (although the nerf to tier 3 fixed it for me i dont see it very often). They are fun and not the best build in the game. Since you complain about hoggar giving you gold every time you buy a pirate that means you think that pirates are broken. No they are not. Divine shield poisonous murlocs are broken.
Pirates on the early game are terrible. Unless you have a cannon they are literally non existent. Mid game they are terrible and in the late game they are pretty good (not murloc or macaw build or kalecgos good, but good enough), but only if you have certain pieces; multiple hoggars (the 5tier rare card that gives you 1 gold back when you buy a pirate), the 5tier windfury dude that gives +2/+2 to other pirates on overkill, the 3tier dude that gets +1/+1 whenever you play a pirate and the 4 tier that buffs +1/+1 for every pirate you bought this turn. That requires a lot of time a lot of rerolls and if you dont have at least 2 hoggars you cannot win. What do poisonous divine shield murlocs need to win? 5 murlocs 1 bran and 1 megasaur. Not even the bran if you are lucky (yeah yeah i know murlocs suck on the mid game and its like pirates you need a couple of pieces you can only get on tier 5 and 6, but we are talking about finishers).
You complained about the 1tier 2/2 that reduces 1 gold from the tavern up that he breaks bartendertron. Bartendetron was a really boring bad hero for me and i think its time they removed him from the game.
Lastly you said “Only one of the new heroes added in pirates is worth playing”. Who is that? Cuz for me at least hooktusk is insane, patches is pretty good, aranna (she wasnt exactly part of pirates but she is new as well and in this meta) is really good, the piggy bank dude is not bad just needs certain builds like pushing from 4 to 5 with murlocs or something similar, eudora is really good.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that yes there is a broken card in the pirates pool and that is goldgrubber. I will agree on that. Although you do need to be really lucky early game with triples so he grows early. But still even if you enter late game with 100/100 goldgrubber guess what. it dies to 1/1 divine shield poisonous murloc
And last inb4 “Just get a ghoul and you can win”. Yeah if you are as unlucky as me everytime i play against murlocs i never get a ghoul
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Think this sums it up well. Except Mechs and Demons, who have a weaker endgame. Demons in particular suffer multiple flaws and struggle badly to ever take first.
I think Pirates are mostly fine, they aren’t even the strongest tribe, but the biggest problem with BG’s now is how far ahead highrolling gets you. The old strat of picking the best stats and aiming for top 4 if you don’t get a good tribe comp rarely works, a rag-tag mix can take 26 damage in one round by tier 5 from someone who rolled a good tribe comp and be smashed into 8th place. There is some skill and I still enjoy BG’s for that, but sometimes you just get completely unwinnable lowroll games and it’s frustrating.
The hero balance is rough too. Jaraxxus could be a 0 cost hero power and still suck and needs a rework badly. Hooktusk is just silly good. I do rather like tribe pushers such as Patches, Ysera, Alexstraza and Flurgl, since regardless of how good they are you actually get a way to control the rng a little and dig for a tribe. They’re fun to play.
The FTP experience is dire now. 2 heros to choose from ends up with many BG’s with 2 terrible choices and you just want to log off and stop playing. Early access to the new heros, emotes and maybe +1 hero choice should be more than enough, but having half the choice just feels bad.
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The FTP experience is dire now. 2 heros to choose from ends up with many BG’s with 2 terrible choices and you just want to log off and stop playing. Early access to the new heros, emotes and maybe +1 hero choice should be more than enough, but having half the choice just feels bad.
This is the main issue. I was chain loosing while being FTP. Finally bought the pass with in game gold when they dropped the price and oh I was winning again. Having the choice between two heroes is the guarantee to get frustrated a lot playing BG since the power level between them is too wide. 1250 gold for that was ok, but I don’t know what I’m gonna do the next time since I don’t play regular HS anymore and don’t have anymore gold. I don’t know why they don’t do like TFT or Rocket League and make a paying pass at 5/10 bucks which unlock heroes and board skins to make it worth. Actually you have to pay only to be able to win consistently which is absolutely awful. Nobody gives a crap about emotes or those awful and useless stats which does not even include your winrate by heroes.
Before maiev is buff, I went first place with her, demon build. I once had divine poisonous murlocs, beaten by double golden soul jugglers.
I think this is the top issue. There is such a wide gap between heroes that it can decide the game before you start.
Further, when you take a hero like flurgl and don’t see a murlock for five turns…well, go figure.
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I agree hero balance is worst issue (again).
Sure those tribe heroes can face hard times but they can also have high rolls. Alas there are much worse heroes than that.
Gaining early stats or faster building of triples is far better than some situational expensive effects.
Not to mention some very weak passives that almost do nothing.
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