BATTLEGROUNDS REVIEW (feel free to discuss)

👏TAVERN REVIEW 👏

Alright, it looks like Elementals are a strange hybrid of both Pirates and Murlocs, it meshes the economy aspect of pirates and the board-buffing aspect of Murlocs, but does not really excel at either of them. However besides big stats, I don’t really see Elementals being able to compete with the Divine Shields and massive stats of dragons or being able to beat Amalgadon, the most played strategy right now. Unless it ends up being a very strong midrange strategy, I can see it potentially flopping. I’m not going to look into the individual cards, but most of them show a lot of promise, especially since their discover/draw effects are very targeted and low tiered.

Heroes:

Ragnaros: 3/5

Could potentially be very strong, actually! You can activate this hero power by turns 5-6 and this is a massive power spike as you just get so much free stats over the course of the game. However, seeing how fast the meta is at the moment, it could be a problem of “too little, too late” as you are forced to go without a hero power for so many turns. I am optimistic for this hero, especially since there are so many tokens that your opponents will be running. Not amazing probably, but has potential.

Chenvaala: 2/5

I am not very sold on this hero. He has crazy highroll potential provided you receive elementals. I will not write him off as of course, power-leveling is the meta right now, and if done correctly, can allow you to really pop off. However, he seems rather inconsistent and relies on the elemental tribe which I believe will not be that good. I suspect you will just use his hero power to quickly switch off elementals into Amalgadon or a Beast build and try to win from there. Very skeptical overall due to how inconsistent the strat is as you will probably die before you can really pop off.

Rakanishu: 1/5

Hero power is way too slow and at 2 gold is not even worth it. Edwin is much better in that sense, and even he is struggling right now.

Al’akir: 4/5

We have established that free stuff is awesome! This is very similar to the Lich King’s hero power and just buffs your dude for free. It can allow you to survive the early game easily (which we established was a problem) and reach those late game builds much safer. I would say he has the most potential to succeed among the heroes shown here is Rag or Chenvaala don’t blow my expectations out of the water. However, the hero power can also prove to be a hinderance in certain situations, but they are rare and few. You have Divine Shield to survive a first hit and Windfury to ensure the minion will always get its swings in.

I'm a little sad that they didn't go the route of "If you played an elemental last round" for Elementals. It would have made Elementals a very interesting playstyle (although I can see why it might not be the best mechanic for Battlegrounds). Even something like "If you didn't buy this card this round" would make Elementals a bit more unique. I just wish that they'd gone in a different design direction than just Buffs plus Card Generation. 

Quote From CursedParrot

I'm a little sad that they didn't go the route of "If you played an elemental last round" for Elementals. It would have made Elementals a very interesting playstyle (although I can see why it might not be the best mechanic for Battlegrounds). Even something like "If you didn't buy this card this round" would make Elementals a bit more unique. I just wish that they'd gone in a different design direction than just Buffs plus Card Generation. 

I think its bad enough to have your chosen built be destroyed by mere rng, so that 'if you play an elemental last turn' idea is merely another way to have your life made more miserable by luck.

Also, in late game there's hardly any room to keep playing elementals. So either elementals be ridiculously powerful because they're usually 1 slot weaker than the others, or they become the next highroll tribe to be played only for memes and very good luck.

Quote From CursedParrot

I'm a little sad that they didn't go the route of "If you played an elemental last round" for Elementals. It would have made Elementals a very interesting playstyle (although I can see why it might not be the best mechanic for Battlegrounds). Even something like "If you didn't buy this card this round" would make Elementals a bit more unique. I just wish that they'd gone in a different design direction than just Buffs plus Card Generation. 

Conversely, I feel that they captured the flavour of Elementals quite well, actually! They obviously rely on each other to work well and there is sufficient hand manipulation going on to still resembl elementals, especially with the unique mechanics from things like the Gentle Djinn and Stasis elemental.

Honestly, I feel that the design of “play an elemental last turn” is a bit unnecessary and does not really matter from a purely gameplay perspective of BG. If you are playing elementals, you should almost always be playing an elemental last turn anyway and this whole effect becomes nothing more than a glorified battlecry. Unless they were to relegate elementals to something like support units for other tribes, which forced you to sacrifice some gold to play an elemental in the last turn for a huge pay off (like give all your minions +3/+3?), then I really do not see the point to it. 

However, I do like some of the ideas you have mentioned like the “not play an elemental this turn” effect. The only caveat would be that it might be a bit complex for people to keep track of.

Noice, can’t wait to play BG when I have the time lol

My evaluation after playing a few games: Elementals are OP.

It is way too easy to get a full board of 20+/20+ minions. You have Taunts with 40+ life, you have a mega-windfury guy with divine shield who can take out between 2-4 guys at the start of every round, and you also have that over-kill guy who can take out 2 guys with one attack, or 3 if he is golden. Most of the time the matches are over after just 2-3 attacks because of how efficient elementals are at killing things.

I think pretty soon we may get a nerf to elementals, but it is probably best to wait at least a few days when they aren't as new to see if they are as powerful as they seem right now.

Had my chance with rag, and can confirm that its absolutely nuts. With the right minions, rag with sulfuras can just go ham. The only inherent weakness is that its slow, so you can still conceivably be beaten if your early game is bad and you took too much damage.

If its gets nerfed, probably would be to the counter than anything else.

Rag is indeed insane. What you want to do is just build up early and get those kills ASAP. After when you are buffing priority targets you can safely tavern up and go from there getting better units to buff. He’s like Jaraxxus or Tirion in that regard. I’m pretty certain it will be tried at +3 +3 some time soon

I don't really like the new meta.  It feels extremely highroll-y.  You might be doing fine, but then come turn 8 you take 30 damage and get last.

Quote From kaladin

I don't really like the new meta.  It feels extremely highroll-y.  You might be doing fine, but then come turn 8 you take 30 damage and get last.

Honestly it's been like that ever since pirates were introduced. Blizzard has mentioned that they're looking into possible changes to how damage works, and I really hope they do find a way to prevent those "lose over half your health just because you got bad matchup/combat rng" moments. One of the changes they mentioned was changing all minion damage to 1, which I think could be a great change if they also lower max hero health so that lategame builds won't become too op (demons would probably also need a rework in this case but I think some sort of rework to demons would be a good idea regardless).

In regards to the new patch, I bought the tavern pass with gold since I'm hardly playing regular Hearthstone anymore anyway and I've been having a great time. The only thing that sucks is that while I have played a lot I've only been offered a new hero twice, Rakanishu and Al'Akir, and Rakanishu just seems real bad and my Al'Akir game was very meh. I was actually most excited to try Ragnaros and Chenvaala so I hope I get to try at least Ragnaros before he gets nerfed. :)

Quote From kaladin

I don't really like the new meta.  It feels extremely highroll-y.  You might be doing fine, but then come turn 8 you take 30 damage and get last.

That's, in my opinion, how it should be.

Basically you start taking real damage around turn 6, so there's more than enough time to settle on a build and see if rng contents to give you the right minions to survive to the last 4. Reducing the damage output will mean games lasting longer, and while that means most of the losing half of players get to stay on longer, it'll soon get tedious. Not going to lie, the only reason I still played battlegrounds at all is because games tend to only be 20-30 minutes long. Any longer and that's it for me, and I suspect that to be the same for most casual players too.

Battlegrounds is obviously designed, like most games, to have higher stakes and more damage later in the game. But I do think that there is too much damage right now. Any time I get a good Elemental board, I am able to consistently deal 16-24 damage every round. And when you only have 40 life, that is just too much damage to be taking at once. I think this is mainly due to Crackling Cyclone which is able to kill 2-4 minions by itself, and Wildfire Elemental which is able to kill 2-3 minions in one attack. Because these two minions are able to kill so many minions by themselves, games usually end faster, and with less attacks on your part then normal. So when the match is over 60% of your board will still be in tact, which lets you deal unnaturally high amounts of damage.

In addition to that Elementals tend to have so many stats that nothing would die anyways no matter how long the games went on.

Quote From dapperdog

Quote From kaladin

I don't really like the new meta.  It feels extremely highroll-y.  You might be doing fine, but then come turn 8 you take 30 damage and get last.

That's, in my opinion, how it should be.

Basically you start taking real damage around turn 6, so there's more than enough time to settle on a build and see if rng contents to give you the right minions to survive to the last 4. Reducing the damage output will mean games lasting longer, and while that means most of the losing half of players get to stay on longer, it'll soon get tedious. Not going to lie, the only reason I still played battlegrounds at all is because games tend to only be 20-30 minutes long. Any longer and that's it for me, and I suspect that to be the same for most casual players too.

You are fine with a single turn deciding whether or not you get top 4?  Because I had one turn of bad rolls and am facing someone who had really good rolls, that means I deserve last?  Honestly want to know if this is your opinion.

I think that the solution to high damage would be to reduce player's health to 30 and make it so that minions deal 1 damage baseline and 1 more damage for every 5 turns of the game that have ended. That way damage still scales, but not as quickly as now. 

Quote From CursedParrot

I think that the solution to high damage would be to reduce player's health to 30 and make it so that minions deal 1 damage baseline and 1 more damage for every 5 turns of the game that have ended. That way damage still scales, but not as quickly as now. 

I think that would result in a massive meta shift.  Late game, seven tokens would deal more damage than one 6-drop. 

Oh right, I forgot to include that tokens always only deal 1 damage. 

I also just thought of a better solution: What if only units that have attacked or been attacked deal damage? That way 1/1 tokens don’t count and a 2/3 Strongshell won’t deal 5 just because your units were killed before it could sacrifice itself into a 20/20.
EDIT: One problem I see with this is that being super-powerful might actually reduce the damage you deal. To fix that, I think maybe making all non-tokens deal 1 at a minimum would be good, whether or not they attacked or were attacked. 

Quote From kaladin

Quote From dapperdog

Quote From kaladin

I don't really like the new meta.  It feels extremely highroll-y.  You might be doing fine, but then come turn 8 you take 30 damage and get last.

That's, in my opinion, how it should be.

Basically you start taking real damage around turn 6, so there's more than enough time to settle on a build and see if rng contents to give you the right minions to survive to the last 4. Reducing the damage output will mean games lasting longer, and while that means most of the losing half of players get to stay on longer, it'll soon get tedious. Not going to lie, the only reason I still played battlegrounds at all is because games tend to only be 20-30 minutes long. Any longer and that's it for me, and I suspect that to be the same for most casual players too.

You are fine with a single turn deciding whether or not you get top 4?  Because I had one turn of bad rolls and am facing someone who had really good rolls, that means I deserve last?  Honestly want to know if this is your opinion.

I tend to think that its just part of how the game works. Unfortunately battlegrounds is mostly an rng fest that can go both ways, and I simply play it for fun. From my perspective, the game is hollowed out as it is and if it drags on any further then I get turned off by it. If rng spits on my face, I just move on to another game.