The unusual Monday patch that graced our game clients was meant mainly to deliver on the promise of weakening certain powerful card outliers and older combo pieces that - in the opinion of many disgruntled players - suffocated various new inventions which came with the Fractured in Alterac Valley expansion. It seems like the nerfs and buffs might succeed at achieving at least some of these goals, but we will have to wait a while before we can properly judge their lasting impact on the wide variety of decks. 

It's a good thing the Battlegrounds meta hasn't been nearly as volatile as its Ranked counterparts ever since the departure of the powerhouse that temporary Diablo hero had eventually become. Depending on whom you might've asked, there still are and were strong, scalable minions/tribes or heroes in need of some 'tuning' (whenever that isn't the case, eh), but there wasn't any state of real emergency. 'Pure' relative balance is a rather difficult aspect to maintain.

So the lighter touches we just got seem about right for this time of the year, and Game Designer Cora "Songbird" Georgiou was around both on Twitch and Twitter to provide us with a little more context and a taste of what's to come and when: 

Quote From Songbird
With the next big BGs content drop coming relatively soon, we didn't want to make any more substantial changes. Also didn't have much time to test anything that was bigger than stats.

It makes sense the team erred on the side of caution and only adjusted some numbers, as they are going to be out of the office for the rest of the year very soon. Speaking in terms of any 'soon' timeframes, the mention of a larger Battlegrounds content update for Phase 3 of the current Year of the Gryphon in Hearthstone is nothing unexpected, but it looks like it might arrive even faster than we could've guessed. 

We will assume this isn't the infamous Blizzard's "soon (tm)" that could mean something even a couple months away, yet it might also not be "the very first week of 2022 as soon as the team is back to work" sort of soon some people might be looking forward to. Anything beyond that looks pretty feasible - we are going to have to see and perhaps end up being pleasantly surprised. 

For the time being, some of these adjustments could just make an impact:

Hero Powers and Armor 

The new Armor system allows for the opportunity to turn some knobs and fine-tune the Health numbers at any point, as intended. With this patch we get to see the first changes to the initial values for a handful of Heroes: 

Quote From Blizzard

Scabbs Cutterbutter

  • Armor Tier changed from Tier 2 (2-5 Armor) to Tier 1 (0 Armor)

Sneed

  • Armor Tier changed from Tier 1 (0 Armor) to Tier 2 (2-5 Armor)

Cariel Roame

  • Armor Tier changed from Tier 6 (6-9 Armor) to Tier 7 (7-10 Armor)

Deathwing

  • Armor Tier changed from Tier 4 (4-7 Armor) to Tier 5 (5-8 Armor)

Millificent Manastorm

  • Armor Tier changed from Tier 3 (3-6 Armor) to Tier 5 (5-8 Armor)

Overlord Saurfang

  • Armor Tier changed from Tier 6 (6-9 Armor) to Tier 7 (7-10 Armor)

Patches the Pirate

  • Armor Tier changed from Tier 3 (3-6 Armor) to Tier 2 (2-5 Armor)

Trade Prince Gallywix

  • Armor Tier changed from Tier 4 (4-7 Armor) to Tier 2 (2-5 Armor)

A few of these adjustments certainly aren't surprising - most especially Scabbs Cutterbutter, Patches the Pirate, and Trade Prince Gallywix. In the recent weeks we've covered the rankings of top performing Battlegrounds Heroes based on both Blizzard's own in-house data and a compilation of scores from some of the notable players. In case anybody could use a quick refresher: 

You can clearly tell which of these check out across the field.

And then we have a nerf and a buff to the two respective Hero Powers recently added to the game mode: 

Quote From Blizzard
Sneed

  • Sneed’s Replicator
    • Old: [Costs 1] → New: [Costs 2]

Sneed's Replicator Card Image

Tamsin

  • Fragrant Phylactery
    • Old: [Costs 0] Start of Combat: Destroy your lowest Health minion. Give its Health to all your others. → New: [Costs 1] Start of Combat: Destroy your lowest Health minion. Give its stats to all your others.

Fragrant Phylactery Card Image

Sneed was given a bit of extra armor as a form of compensation, but the nerf is still going to hurt a lot. The ability will no longer be as 'spammable', especially for the early rounds advantage, and the gold cost of investing several Deathrattles into a minion you might wish to part ways with later on becomes substantially greater. 

Then Tamsin was commonly viewed as a disappointment and one of the worst heroes, so the buff has a lot of players excited about this renewed potential. Adding the Attack value on top of Health could prove to be the much needed game changer (keep in mind it's still temporary combat buffs), as your own more versatile Goldrinn, the Great Wolf. It does come at a cost, however, with the hero power no longer being free. The early reactions range from optimistic to doubting whether it's going to be much better, or even believing it's bait.

The implications here involve minions such as Evolving Chromawing (natural huge Attack/low Health numbers) -- now Baron Rivendare could really slap that Zapp Slywick back hard) - or freshly dropped Swolefin once you already have built a board of 6 other bigger (at least in terms of Health value) Murlocs. Added Monstrous Macaw and primarily Tarecgosa interactions go without saying.

Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig actually had a few extra insights to add to the inquiries: 

Quote From Celestalon
We found it to be *massively* better in testing, warranting the cost increase. If that doesn't play out in practice, we can always adjust further.

For my curiosity, did you also test with it at 1 cost? How did that compare to the 0 cost health only?

Of course. Much stronger.

 

Quote From Celestalon
Chromawing + a bunch of divine shields is a good comp. As are elementals or dragons builds where everything is about the same size.

Quote From Celestalon
When it's giving your whole board practically poisonous, it tends to be pretty solid.

No, Celestalon isn't literally saying that all your minions might suddenly be able to get Poison from this and one-shot the enemy ones, but that a huge Attack buff might very well end up having a similar effect on the board. Especially where Divine Shields are concerned. 

All in all, there is a lot more to explore now with Tamsin, we will have to see how she fares meanwhile.

Minion Changes

Not a whole lot to talk about here, only a couple of minor touches: 

Quote From Blizzard

Prized Promo-Drake

  • Old: 5 Attack, 5 Health → New: 3 Attack, 3 Health

Prized Promo-Drake Card Image

Dazzling Lightspawn

  • Old: 4 Attack, 5 Health → New: 2 Attack, 5 Health

Dazzling Lightspawn Card Image

Neither of these minions is being primarily used for their stats; although the lower Attack/Health values might affect combat outcomes in the early Tavern rounds. Otherwise Prized Promo-Drake is still going to act as the reliable Tarecgosa fuel, while Dazzling Lightspawn will continue allowing other Elementals to scale big. 

The most popular strategy of hovering around lower Tavern Tiers and fishing for triples just to find valuable Tier 4 minions is likely to remain unaffected by any of this, yet skilled ladder climbers will continue testing various other possible directions for their boards. 

As for what the upcoming big content update might add to the Battlegrounds, that's anybody's guess. The more expected additions in new Hero(-es) and Minion(-s), some reworks or removals for the existing ones? Could the team fit in yet another distinct tribe without some sort of seasonal rotation in the mix? Some kind of Honor system in the vein of Darkmoon Prizes, or the return of the latter? We will just have to wait for the new calendar year to find out.

Do you like any of these smaller tweaks in particular? Got some fine ideas about the big Battlegrounds update for Phase 3 at the start of 2022? We are curious to see them!