Ahead of Thursday's planned patch, Mike Donais has taken to reddit to give us some insight into what to expect from it in terms of Hearthstone Battlegrounds, including new heroes, balance changes, and the first iteration of the stats page!
Thursday's patch will also remove the Doom in the Tomb event cards from Standard, and will likely contain the data for the upcoming Descent of Dragons cards, as the expansion launches on Tuesday 10th, and all the cards will be revealed by the end of Wednesday 4th.
Quote From Mike Donais Has there been any announcement for what is coming on the December 5th Battlegrounds patch/update?
I believe the only thing I remember hearing is that Amalgam is getting nerfed and we may be getting a new hero, but I wasn't sure if anything else was announced yet.
3 new heroes.
Balancing some old heroes.
- 2 new minions.
- Amalgam change isn't until January.
- Balance Lightfang Enforcer to +2/+1.
- Version 1 of stats page. Version 2 is January or February.
- Patch notes will be out on Dec 5th most likely.
Fighting Twice in a Row? Don't Expect Fixes Yet
Quote From Mike Donais Are you still changing hero fight rotation to cant fight the same person again in two turns???? That's the biggest one to a lot of people.
Yes, but not in the dec 5th patch.
Comments
Future Team 5: "Hey, we were thinking of bringing some Wild cards back into Standard for a few-"
Emotionally scarred post-Doom in the Tomb HS players: "NO!"
As for the BGs changes, I'm not sure if +2/+1 is enough of a nerf; the power comes more from affecting all minion types. Still, nerfing +Health is more impactful than +Attack. If Blizzard keeps updating BGs relatively quickly, as they have been, then these small, iterative changes can work. If it's not enough of a nerf, keep going until it is.
I'm excited to try King Bagurgle, though I forgot what the other new minion will be. I have no idea who the heroes will be, either, but I hope they're interesting and worthy of consideration when picking.
The other minion is Floating Watcher.
I'm really excited to see those BG changes...
I like the Enforcer nerf, though I thought it could have been even harder - make it +1/+1 but then make him bigger (for example 8/8) to compensate it a little bit, but I don't know, maybe changing it to +2/+1 will be good enough.
But mostly it will be very interesting to see how those 2 new minions will change the current archetypes. My prediction is, that the new Murloc king will still not be enough to make Murlocs as good as the other tribes (or managerie), because if he's going to be in tier 5, it's too late to start with buffing and also he will be quite rare, so it won't have so big impact.
However the new demon - I think demons are already very good (maybe even best) tribe, and this can make them even better.
I hope they will make more changes soon, mainly those regarding performance and faster animations, change to amalgam would be also welcome, although I would rather see them create something new instead of Amalgam - for exmaple some dual type minions (something that is Demon and Beast at the same time, then another which is Beast and Mech and so on) ...and obviously I hope they add Dragons to BG soon :)
Added an additional update from Mike, this time about not to expect fixes for fighting the same person twice in a row... yet.
Lightfang and Amalgam nerfs? I can’t wait to see how the meta will evolve after that! The new murloc also helps to dilute the tier 5 pool for anyone not playing murlocs, so thats a relief.
I expect menagerie to lose a bit of popularity, but it will probably still be very powerful. I guess we just have to wait and see what the new dominant strategy will be. Probably any strategy that can utilize Brann to its fullest. Those double battlecries cannot be underestimated
Yay! A few days without the Evolve meta before DoD drops! Domb in the Tomb has been one of the worst meta's I've experienced, and I lived through MSoG!
finally, a few days of peace.
I guess Combo Priest will be back in full force though...
It warms my so-called heart to know that I'm not the only one who's grown overly tired of the N'Zoth nonsense.
Guess I'll be properly coming back to standard for the first time in months on Thursday then. What a monumental disaster bringing back evolve (and to a much lesser extent, imo, N'Zoth) has been. I applaud their efforts in trying to innovate and hope that they hold similar events in the future, but Blizz has to be prepared to be flexible and act decisively if the miserable state of ladder that exists now happens again. I remember reading that Iksar felt that things were alright a little while back, which is troubling to say the least.
But hey, at least Battlegrounds is fun! The conspiracy theorist in me wants to think that Blizz downplayed the shaman nonsense in order to drive people into the new game mode prior to a new expansion which would tempt them back, but this seems silly...
N'zoth wasn't such a bad idea, because at least that guy's neutral.
3 NEW HEROES ?!?!
WHO COULD THEY BE ?!?!?!
Millhouse. He starts at 10 Gold, but every time he loses he Pyroblasts himself in the face
Reno will probably be one of them.
The other three could literally be anyone. It would be cool to seems some of the villains like Dr. 7, or Rafaam.
I honestly just want ETC as a hero.
Have they adressed what they will do with the issue in battlegrounds were you get matched against the same opponent twice in 3 matches?
I said it from when they announced the cards being brought back -- the biggest flaw in the event was NOT throwing in Skulking Geist.
No guarantee, but it would've toned down the effect of a number of decks.
Skulking Geist has had a good effect in wild against evolve shaman, and would've shot down rogues counting on Togwaggle's Scheme on N'Zoth, Inner Fire priests, secret-using paladins, and maybe have some effect on druid, warrior and mage.
/Skulking Geist is a tech card I do think should become part of the classic set, btw
sorry, but what would Geist do to stop a turn 4 Evolve?
And moreover, what decks are you playing that consistently get beaten by N'zoth Rogue?
With quest druid that might not work as planned though, they pretty much want to draw through their deck.
So excited to see Doom in the Tomb done. I liked having some of the cards (Curator, Ragnaros, Emperor T.) but Evolve & N'Zoth (because of K Defender) is just... miserable. Probably my second least favorite meta after the Quest Rogue meta we had before.
Only played wild during doom in the tomb.
Wasn't much of a difference.