Today's 18.0 patch prepared us for the upcoming expansion launch, while also making some changes to weapon and Hunter card frames. Battlegrounds was not left without love either, as we got a brand new hero to play with and some new minions to replace the old multi-tribe support cards.
New Hero - Mr. Bigglesworth
Kel'Thuzad's kitty didn't make it into the expansion as a legendary card, but became a Battlegrounds hero instead! Don't let the cuteness fool you, this ruthless predator feasts on your opponents' demise, giving you a choice of three minions that a player had when being knocked out - with ALL enchantments they had!
Mr. Bigglesworth will officially go live on August 13th, but players with Battlegrounds Perks will have the chance to try the cat before that.
Improved Menagerie Support
In an attempt to support the multi-tribe strategy, commonly referred as menagerie, Zoobot and Menagerie Magician have been removed from the minion pool, and replaced with two brand new battlegrounds-unique minions, Menagerie Mug and Menagerie Jug.
Instead of being restricted to just Beasts, Dragons, and Murlocs, these new minions will give buffs to ANY different minion types, while keeping the limit of three as the old minions had.
Bug Fixes
Additionally, the patch had two bug fixes in store:
- Fixed visual display issues with Deathwing’s Battlegrounds hero power.
- Battlegrounds summon speed improvements for Pack Leader and Mama Bear have been re-introduced.
Undocumented Changes
But wait, there's more! For reasons unknown, Southsea Strongarm saw some art adjustments, with the hair color changing to blonde and the hat color to brown. But why, Blizzard?
UPDATE: This change was not intentional and will be reverted in a future patch (Source).
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Comments
Waiting for the inevitable Kripp vid of using the cat with murlocs, doing the same old murloc plays
New poison animation but no actual balance changes to Murlocs who still steamroll everything in the late game. The cat hero seems interesting but not great. You get to discover a minion from a dead player and it keeps all enchantments and everything but you can only wait and hope you can live until someone dies. If that person was too weak then won't get a lot from the first death then you have to wait again. Seems really tricky. The Battlegrounds meta has been quite brutal since the introduction of Pirates. You just take a lot of damage very quickly.
I got him and tied for 8th place with one other player. Great hero power :D
Got him again and got 2nd losing to huge pirates. If you can survive and not die first it's a big power swing. Probably ideal for menagerie comps that can be more flexible.
That ability for Mr Bigglesworth is kinda dumb. I'm not an avid player in Battlegrounds, but I have played enough to know that if you RNG well on that roll you are going to get something really stupid.
Might not fit your comp tho and by the time most players start dying, you probably already need to have established board. Not to say you cant switch strategies later on, but you are also basically playing without a Hero Power for the early to mid game. It will be interesting to see how will this pan out.
And the kitty is in after all :)