On the weekend, Dean Ayala, Hearthstone's design lead on both the core game and Battlegrounds, released some fun facts about Hearthstone's newest game mode. We previously covered some of these in dedicated news posts, so here's the rest of them!
Quote From Dean Ayala 1. Murloc Tidehunter is the most picked Tier 1 Minion.
Spawn of N'Zoth for Tier 2
Cobalt Guardian for Tier 3
Defender of Argus for Tier 4
Brann Bronzebeard for tier 5
and Ghastcoiler for Tier 6.2. Dancin' Deryl is the 2nd most played hero on the NA, EU, and Asia servers. He is the 11th most played hero on the Chinese server.
3. Reno Jackson is the 4th most picked hero, but has the 24th highest placement ranking among all heroes. Ragnaros the Firelord is 23rd place and Pyramad is 25th.
4. Among 5k+ rated players, Lord Jaraxxus has the 28th highest average placement. Among players with less than 5k rating, Jaraxxus is the 5th highest average placement. Among <5k rated players, he has the 2nd highest top 4 rate (69.5%), only behind Deathwing.
5. Among 5k+ rated players, The Great Akazamzarak has the 8th highest average placement. Among players with less than 5k rating, The Great Akazamzarak is the 20th highest average placement.
6. Lich Baz'hial has the 4th lowest average placement, but the 9th highest rate of 1st place finishes.
7. The least powerful hero in all regions at all levels is Millhouse Manastorm. He has the lowest average placement and lowest rate of top 4 and top 1. He could use a buff :).
8. Among 11k+ rated players. Nozdormu has the highest average placement.
9. Deathwing is the most powerful hero in all regions at all levels outside the very, very top rated players. We're playtesting him internally at +2 attack and will likely nerf him to that soon ™.
10. The most powerful hero in all regions at all levels was Tirion Fordring. We playtested with his hero power at (2) mana and it felt like too big of a detriment. We also thought about changing the minion pool but opted to take some more time to playtest internally while we deactivate.
Comments
Reno is probably that low because people still don't know how to play him, I remember seeing a player had used his 4 gold hero power on a Battlemaster. I've had decent success with him using the hero power on early scaling minions like Wrath Weaver and Waxrider Togwaggle and even had a good run where I used the hero power on Herald of Flame.
Nozdormu has the highest placement, and millhouse has the lowest
Kinda an obvious hint, right team5?
Dancin' Deryl is an interesting hero. I know he has a ton of potential but I really have no idea how to play him. Do I just freeze the board for 2/3 turns until I can get an 11/11+ Righteous Protector? Or do I just play as normal and maybe score a handful of hats?
One time one of my opponents played Dancin' Deryl and stayed on tier 1 for the entire game. I can't remember if he made top 4 or not, but I remember he did much better than I thought he would.
Daryl is my most successful hero and I never play "normally" - I want tokens first pick if I can and then focus on buying-selling to buff the best buff-target for each tavern round (divine shielded, best base stats, useful effect, whatever). I tier up only if I've spare gold I can't use otherwise or ahead of playing a triple. I don't refresh until I've either bought all the minions or I really need to find triples to improve my board (which can be the sticking point late and make the difference between a 3rd/4th or a 1st/2nd). Try and keep 6 buffed minions and a 7th "battlecry" slot as long as you can - but sooner or later you need to fill it with a buffed minion most times.
The only drawbacks with this style I'd say are that, though you win most rounds, you do very little damage to your opponents and, as noted, you can get stuck with a board that isn't going to be good enough late on but that you struggle to improve without triples (and of course even then your triple finds aren't particularly powerful as you as low tier).
Play normal until 8 gold, then whenever you find a minion with a strong ability (like Divine shield) you buy every other minion in the tavern, then sell them back (possibly along with any other worthless minion) so that a ton of hats drop on that one minion and then you buy it.
On later turns, after your board is already strong, you can buy junk minions and then freeze the good one so that you can sell two turns worth of cards on a single minion.
P.S. It is easier to do this specifically on tavern tier 3, because on higher tiers there are too many minions and it needs a bit more advanced decision making, which comes with experience.
funniest fact is - how is it popular.
*insert brainlet here*
HoW cAN SoMEoNe lIkE SomEThInG tHaT I DoN't?
Is it special that deryl is eleventh in china? I don't understand why that fact was included but not for anywhere else.
It's probably just because there's a very obvious discrepancy between the servers - NA, EU and Asia have him as 2nd most played, but he's all the way down at 11th in China.
It's unlikely there's other heroes where there's such a strange difference in only one server.
Maybe because a larger proportion of Chinese players are mobile only? Just a guess
Would be a good guess, I mostly play mobile and Deyrl is almost unplayable for me as I just dont have enough time on the turn to buy and sell all the minions needed.
Low skill players don't know how to ice block...
I think they tend to use the HP too early.
That also qualifies as not knowing how to do it properly