A large Battlegrounds patch is arriving this Thursday, October 15, and focuses on some seriously needed balance.
- Cora wrote some designer insights on the changes. See them here.
Quote From Blizzard On October 15, we’ll be releasing the 18.4.2 patch that includes numerous Battlegrounds balance updates! You can check out the full details of the patch below.
Battlegrounds Hero Updates
- Bartendotron has been removed from the Battlegrounds Hero Pool.
Ragnaros the Firelord
- DIE, INSECTS!
- Old: After you kill 20 enemy minions, get Sulfuras. → New: After you kill 25 enemy minions, get Sulfuras.
- Sulfuras
- Old: At the end of your turn, give your left and right-most minions +4/+4. → New: At the end of your turn, give your left and right-most minions +3/+3.
Maiev Shadowsong
- Imprison
- Old: Make a minion in Bob's Tavern Dormant. After 2 turns, get it with +1/+1. → New: Make a minion in Bob's Tavern Dormant. After 2 turns, get it with +1 Attack.
Chenvaala
- Avalanche
- Old: After you play 3 Elementals, reduce the cost of upgrading Bob's Tavern by (2). → New: After you play 3 Elementals, reduce the cost of upgrading Bob's Tavern by (3).
Patchwerk
- All Patched Up
- Old: Start with 50 Health instead of 40. → New: Start with 55 Health instead of 40.
Sindragosa
- Stay Frosty
- Old: At the end of your turn, Frozen minions get +1/+1. → New: At the end of your turn, Frozen minions get +2/+1.
King Mukla
- Bananarama
- Now has a chance to give King Mukla a Big Banana that gives a minion +2/+2.
Battlegrounds Minion Updates
- Whirlwind Tempest has been removed from the Battlegrounds minion pool.
- Pogo-Hopper has been removed from the Battlegrounds minion pool.
Selfless Hero
- Old: [Tier 1] → New: [Tier 2]
Deadly Spore
- Old: [Tier 4] → New: [Tier 5]
Salty Looter
- Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health. → New: 4 Attack, 4 Health.
Bloodsail Cannoneer
- Old: 4 Attack, 2 Health. → New: 4 Attack, 3 Health.
Party Elemental
- Old: 2 Attack, 2 Health. → New: 3 Attack, 2 Health.
Arcane Assistant
- Old: 3 Attack, 2 Health. → New: 3 Attack, 3 Health.
Majordomo Executus
- Old: At the end of your turn, give your left-most minion +1 / +1 for each Elemental you played this turn. → New: At the end of your turn, give your left-most minion +1/+1. Repeat for each Elemental you played this turn.
Lil’ Rag
- Old: [Tier 5] 4 Attack, 4 Health. → New: [Tier 6] 6 Attack, 6 Health.
Gentle Djinni
- Old: [Tier 6] 6 Attack, 8 Health. → New: [Tier 5] 4 Attack, 5 Health.
Comments
Nerf is up, but Whirlwind Tempest wasn't removed.
Not sure why people are saying the Maiev nerf is harsh. The extra 1 health never had much of an influence outside of the very early game when 1 health really matters. Her strength is the ability to make small gold investments for large benefits later, not giving them +1/+1. With any other hero, when you roll down to 1 or 2 gold and you finally find that triple or Baron or whatever, you're forced to freeze, costing you 1 gold on top of the gold you're wasting. With Maiev, that's not the case, and it's still the same after the nerf. There will be times where this nerf has an influence, but it feels like a placebo nerf to me.
Same goes for the buffs to Party Elemental, Arcane Assistant, Bloodsail Cannoneer and Salty Looter. Of course, there will be times in which 1 health or 1 attack really matters, but in a game where everyone's minions' attack and health is in the 20s or 30s, it's rarely going to be relevant.
I think the Chenvaala buff is quite interesting. With it, you can buy a minion on turn 1, and then skip levelling and buy a minion on turn 2. Then on turn 3, you can buy a minion, making levelling cost 0 gold. Will that actually make a significant difference? Most likely, no. It has the same problem as Bartendotron in that if you want to power level, just play Omu instead.
One thing I'm not seeing many people comment on is Gentle Djinni going down a tavern tier. It gives you a free unit after each combat and an extra body during combat. The majority of the strength of elementals comes from playing them (with cards like Rag, Nomi, Majordomo, Party Elemental, etc), so getting a free one every turn with the opportunity for strong battle cry effects (like Arcane Assistant, Tavern Tempest, Stasis Elemental, etc) and potential tripling seems pretty insane.
Why did they change the wording on majordomo? That just seems like it'll mean more animations
Now it will always give at least a +1/+1 buff even if you haven't played any elementals in a turn.
Oh nice, he needed a little bit of a buff
Patchwerk with Max health that doesn’t end with 0 makes me feel weir
Blizzard has seen this and now they're changing his health to 57.
I bet you there's be some smartass at Blizzard who'd change his health to a decimal number.
These are all very good nerfs. I like how they nerfed some heroes without killing them (Hooktusk).
wow this is a huge patch in a very short amount of time.
Nice that they're buffing King Mukla and Patchewerk, and so long Pogos.
I lived the Jandice dream with them but they are a problem
I like a lot of these changes, rag, maiev, and jandice all being in a way is pretty nice, though I still think Jandice got off the hook a bit easily. as well as Maiev still being very strong, The changes to elementals are pretty nice, Nomi is still a great option for elementals, although he is usually much less explosive than Rag is so hopefully they can bring back pirates and demons from the grave. The selfless and spore nerfs are justified for sure, but that won't stop me from being upset that scam builds won't be as easy anymore.
I am really impressed with how fast and frequent the updates are here.
I think the Ragnaros nerf is good, I just hope it isn't overkill. Like all abilities, you need some luck for a big payoff, but I've seen him generate some absolutely disgusting boards. I've done it myself once, and damn that's fun. But it feels unfair.
I played Rag in my most recent Battlegrounds run - it took an eternity to complete the Sulfuras "quest" because the match-making kept putting me up against the Kel-thuzad player who had quit on Turn 1. Hahah. Eventually got there XD, and finished 2nd in the lobby with 4 Whirlwind Tempests on board (2 golden).
Why'd they move the spore to 5? Maiev seems harsh. The Tempest removal seems ok, it wasn't doing much except dilute the minion pool. Everything else looks good.
Tempest was an insane minion. Crackling Cyclone getting 4 attacks off before your opponent gets 1 can instantly wipe your board without any counter. Al'akir with cleaves makes this even more toxic. It's way more common than you'd think.
That's it? That's their big fix for Pirates being unplayable? Their way to make Demons relevant in any way? Their update to bring dragons back from being useless unless you luck into a Kalecgos? Their nerf to Elementals? Djinni is now better at what it's used for (it ain't the stats)! Two of the four elemental buffers got improved. Nomi is still busted in half.
But hey, Maiev's 1 cost minion purchases now get -1 health, Patchwerk has 5 extra HP, Sindragosa is just as useless as she was cause her hero power doesn't come close to even someone like Kaelthas. The hero meta is officially fixed guys! /s
Why make good points besides Sindragosa being useless and then end it with "/s"?
The sarcasm only applied to the last sentence of the second paragraph ;) I guess it was pretty redundant but you never know how dense people on the Internet can be.
And why make good points indeed when this is the extent of effort the devs intend to put into the mode. It's not like they're not getting feedback on this shit on forums. Pirates have been nigh-on useless for several patches now and Dragons have been so slow in scaling since their introduction that they're barely worth trying. Instead of addressing those long-standing issues we got another tribe shoved in last patch to overshadow them even more.
That's not to mention the discrepancy in hero power levels, which they're barely addressing. More than half the hero pool is still worthless, Maiev gets an irrelevant nerf (it's her insane economy that makes her busted, not the stats), Lich King still farms everyone and Rafaam swims in gold and triples just like Maiev. Getting +1 extra attack on frozen minions per turn isn't going to redeem Sindragosa in that environment. She's so deep down in the trash tier and all the top heroes get so many major stat or economy bonuses that this little change won't shift the scales in any significant way. She can technically get more stats on her minions than Kaelthas etc., but she could do that already. She pays for her extra stats with the inability to efficiently search for key minions to enhance her strategy, cause she's incentivised to skip the free rerolls she gets at the start of each turn. Thus she has the raw stats on her minions but is slow to reach those internal synergies that make builds tick.
The man has some points
Anyone else think Gentle Djinni would be a fun constructed card in the right set?
Anyway, I agree with almost everything here. Not sure about the early game Elemental buffs though. Don't think that was really necessary.