It generates battlecry minions.

I honestly still don't get why people think that OW2 is just an expansion. New heroes/maps, new Visuals, new Story, big engine upgrades, a bunch of pvp reworks (5v5, role passives, tanks into bruisers, complete hero reworks like Bastion, light reworks like Reinhard, general reduction of cc etc.), a bunch of indivitual hero reworks and a big pve campaign + random pve levels on top of that. What more does it need in order to be a "real" sequel?

I have no Idea how long the patch notes are going to be with so much confirmed content.

It's also worth noting that the new mercs are teased to be Dragon related.

All of that on top of the already confirmed mercs content (new Mercenaries, Traininggrounds V1 and a new pve Zone)? This might very well be the biggest non-expansion / non-new-mode update to this day.

The first BG board also has this feature.

I'd say this is more likely part of a upcoming Lunar New Year Bundle. Iksar mentioned that they are saving the Pandarian Theme for when they eventually release a Monk class and (in a different Q&A) that they are currently not working on a new class.

Quote From Author

The decision on the hero power alone would probably make a 2 hour documentary.

There actually is a two parted documentary about the DH creation (1 | 2). Some of the Heropowers they tried include:

2 Mana: Deal 2 damage to a minion and your hero

2 Mana: Gain +1 attack and ignore Taunt this turn

2 Mana: Gain +1 attack (can be used twice each turn)

2 Mana: Gain +1 attack (attacking generates Fury) | Fury used to be a DH exclusive ressource

The current 1 mana gain +1 attack was also originally scrapped earlier in development and later revisited after the other failed attempts.

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The Year of the Phoenix is coming to an end

Oh boy, I can't wait for the Darkmoon Mini-set.

What you are expecting or what you are hoping for? They did already tease Dragon mercs btw.

Maybe something like Ascension levels in other games. Something Like:

Tier 1: Enemies have more health

Tier 2: Enemies have more health and attack

Tier 3: Enemies have more health and attack and elite encounters are more common

Tier 4: Enemies have more health and attack and elite encounters are more common and Bosses have new moves

etc.

Quote From Zelgadis

it isn't all that much work to get characters to level 30 by sticking them on the bench for a few days while you complete dailies

You underestimate how long it can take to reach level 30 for a casual player. It takes around 1-2 hours for me to reach level 30 if I farm the heroic Nefarian Boss. That alone is quite a lot of time for a casual player who just plays less than 20min per day.

Now Casual players probably won't try to be as efficient as possible, which also increases the needed time by a couple hours. If you now also consider that it's obvious (even to a casual player) that most tasks can easily be done in the earliest bounties, then you can also add extra time since you barely get any xp there.

And now take the total ammount of mercs, divide it by 3 (since you can train them while they are in your bench) and multiply it by the before mentioned time needed.

Does a casual player need every merc at level 30? No

Would it be nice for them to have some alternatives to their main party? Absolutely.

Quote From Alfi

Are there players still playing the gamemode?

Definetely, I'm hitting a consistent 30s que time. It may not sound like a lot, but you have to consider that the vast majority of players focus on pve and maybe get the first daily pvp chest.

Seems incredbly unlikely considering that AV launched just a month ago. You have to keep in mind that the Races mini-set launched in January, because Darkmoon was released a month earlier than usual.

.2 are usually the big mid-expansion updates. I wonder wether it's for BG, Mercs or maybe even Duels.

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The economy is BAD. It is very hard to gain coins for any specific Merc.

I mean you can kinda target farm them with bounties, but it still takes quite a lot of time to farm a specific you don't have. Farming the Mysterious stranger event on the hand is a pretty reliable way of maxing out the important abilities.

Tough the amount of random merc coins you get from tasks and pvp chests is nothing to underestimate. Sure it's not the most efficient way, but it does progress the total merc collection.

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I just maxed out my first Merc (Cariel) and am still earning coins for her.

That's actually a common complain and the devs stated in their "What's next" Post that they are working on a way to spend excess coins. It's definetely a feature to expect in the first merc focused update.

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I had an empty spot, but it still said "the campfire is full" when I encountered the coveted "Mysterious Stranger."

That's actually working as intendet. The game just doesn't explain the mechanic well enough. When you look at your task board you notice that only 4 slots say "New Tasks in X hours", while the other 2 have nothing written on them. The reason for this is that the Task board has 4 dedicated merc Task Slots, 1 for the daily toki quest and 1 for the Story quests.

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Finally, whenever I get the "Use Boon: Caster" task, it takes forever to find a board with that Boon on it.

I usually do the boon tasks in the heroic air elemental bounty. There you are guaranteed to have a boon after only 1 or at max 2 battles.

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And last of all, I have quit entirely on the Fighting Pit. It used to be the best way to earn coins and level up Mercs quickly (bring a mismatched squad with one low level Merc and five level 30's, get matched with an AI and profit). It has been over a week since I faced an AI. Instead, I get matched with overpowered players and get creamed, and that's AFTER waiting 4-6 minutes for a game. It's clear that very few players are playing Mercenaries, or the matchmaking wouldn't take so long.

To be fair the fighting pit was never ment as a way to level your mercs against bots. The raeson why you aren't getting matched with bots probably has something to do with the changes to mm they did a while ago.

The reason for the long que times also do not neccesarely have something to do with the relatively small pvp playerbase. You have to consider that the mm also takes your overall merc power into account. So there could theoratically be a huge pvp playerbase and you would still have to wait 2-4 minutes because non of the players que with a low power team.

I personally play at around 7500mmr right now and can find a match in at max. 30 sec.

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And if so, what can we do about it?

I think one important thing is to remind yourself that the mode is all about grinding. If someone doesn't enjoy grinding then mercs is definitely not for them. As of right now we as the players can do nothing about gameplay issues other than waiting. The devs did hear the feedback and are saying that they are working on the problem. It's also good to know that the dedicated merc dev team is very pasionate about it and tries their best. One of them with the Usernames Kaizor is also relatively active on the merc discord channel (though has been quite for the last 2 weeks, maybe because of the holidays?) and also particpated in a few community Interviews. The devs also said that mercs has a similar update cycle to BG, so there should be 1 big merc update per Expansion which will hopefully fix the bigger issues of the mode.

Quote From Unreal89

Nerfs are already in the game :)

 

In order to see it, just exit HS, then wait until Battle Net hopefully updates it automatically for you and you are good to go!

You can also manually search for updates by clicking on the gear next to the play button.

you are acting as if this is the last change they are making to the mode. Keep in mind that it will have a similar update cycle to Battlegrounds, so you can expect 1 big patch that focuses on Mercenaries per Expansion.

Quote From Author

Also this is basicly a pointless nerf i.m.o. because the battlecry is why you play it. Even as a 1/1 minion Alliance Bannerman will still see play.

It indeed won't have a big impact, but it's not zero. Remember EVIL Miscreant which went from a "slightly too strong" to a "pretty good" card through a simple 1 health nerf? Sure, the nerf doesn't matter in every game, but it will push the overall winrate down by a few percentages.

The difference is that it's much easier to hit the middleground with nerfs than with buffs since they have more data about overpowered than underpowered cards. It's generally also easier to overshoot balance changes and the worst case of "destroying a deck" is still better than "creating a new problem".