The Hearthstone developers were out in full force to discuss Battlegrounds in yesterday's developer AMA. Here's all the important stuff you need to know!

  • We're getting more info on Battlegrounds balance changes in "the coming weeks".
  • Battlegrounds remains in beta so they can make larger changes to the mode if they want.
  • Tide Razor and Nat Pagle in Battlegrounds are problematic and they are exploring options to fix it.
  • Eudora will be the target of Battlegrounds balance changes. Info coming in the weeks ahead.
  • They'll be discussing Battlegrounds rank resets when we're closer to the next major update for the mode.
  • Murlocs in Battlegrounds are on the radar and they are testing ways to make them less consistently powerful. They do like the synergy they have though.
  • Beasts in Battlegrounds could use some love to make it more exciting with Goldrinn now at Tier 6.

Quote From Developer AMA

What's been the biggest eureka moment for you this year (as an individual or as a team)?

This is a very "engineer" answer, but when Battlegrounds first launched we had some issues where combat wouldn't play out the same way for both opponents. This took a lot of effort to track down and required a lot of more robust logging and reporting implementation. Finally figuring out the root cause and being able to confidently reproduce and fix the issue was a huge relief! (Source)

Hello, can you tell us anything about what upcoming changes are planned for Battlegrounds? I’m sure fellow BG enthusiasts would like to hear what is the plan to diversify the endgame (aka less massive poisonous divine shield murlocs)

Murlocs are on our radar, and internally we're testing a few different ways to tone them down. We like that they have a strong identity, but right now they're too consistently powerful. Ideally, not every game with Murlocs available would end with Murlocs in 1st place, and right now that does seem to often be the case. We also think there's room to make the Beast minion type a bit more exciting now that Goldrinn is at tier 6. They have a few gaps in their curve that we'd like to address. Other than that, there should be more information about balance changes heading your way in the coming weeks! (Source)

When is there going to be a Battlegrounds ranking reset?

We've been discussing this at large for sometime and have a plan in place to address this soon! Things we're planning to cover are seasonal resets and more. We will be sharing the full details as we get closer to our next major Battlegrounds update. (Source)

Is there plans to buff/nerf heroes in Battlegrounds? The hero power disparity in the early game means if you are given a "suboptimal" hero early you bascially start at half health unless you get ridiculous quality tier two minions. I wanna play characters like Reno and George without losing 8+ health from characters like Nozdormu, Eudora and Maiev.

We do have some balance changes heading your way pretty soon! Should have more to say on that in the coming weeks. Eudora in particular is one we want to address. (Source)

Has the team discussed making the randomly generated minions from Deathrattles only 1-star when it comes to how much damage they deal at the end of each Combat round?

As more tribes/minions get added, the random minions being generated from Deathrattles during Combat has gone up. It feels pretty bad when your opponents Tide Razor randomly spawns a Dread Admiral and two Amalgadons to hit you for a ton of extra damage because there was no way to play around it. I would argue that changing the random minions to 1-star (like Robosaur) would eliminate the bad experiences when on the receiving end and be a net positive change for the game mode.

Hey!

We've discussed this a fair bit internally. I think the problem does exist mostly with The Tide Razor and Nat Pagle right now, and being killed from 30 after your opponents Nat Pagle spawns a Golden Tide Razor can be a really bad experience.

That being said, we're exploring design options for those two cards in particular that will hopefully eliminate that from happening. Battlegrounds is still in Beta so we're willing to make larger changes with the game, but tokens as of now feel ok to us aside from those two instances. If that changes in the future, then we'll address it. (Source)