Cora has produced a quick "Designer Insights" into the upcoming Battlegrounds changes. Thanks, Cora, hope you're enjoying your lunch!
Quote From Cora Bartendotron: Feels like budget Omu right now, so we removed him. Would love to update and bring him back at some point. He's a great character.
Ragnaros Nerf: We discussed a couple ways to turn Rag down. Originally in testing his HP was kill 30 enemies, and we overshot when we buffed him internally. Decided 25 and +3/+3 was still good timing for the HP to activate, and a very useful buff. Still probably pretty good.
Maiev Nerf: She's strong, but not too far off from where we'd like her to be. We felt taking +1 Health off of the buff would be fine for now. Her playstyle is fun.
Chenvaala Buff: She was preeeeety weak. Fun play pattern though, and wanted one hero that encourages Elementals.
Patchwerk Buff: Felt like a fine place to put a bit more power. Not as strong as when he was initially released, but should still be a reasonable buff.
Sindragosa Buff: Awesome character, slightly underwhelming HP. Wanted to put a little power here so we gave it a stat.
King Mukla Buff: Mukla would like Big Bananas, because they are bigger than regular Bananas. Only about 1 in 5 times though.
Whirlwind Tempest Removed: Mega-Windfury can feel really not interactive, and we felt it wasn't a particularly fun minion to have in the pool.
Pogo-Hopper Removed: This was a tough decision. It hurts Brann and Shudderwock slightly, but Jandice and Pogos can't exist in the game in the same way any longer. Ultimately we decided to preserve Jandice's HP because it's really unique and interesting if Pogo just isn't there.
Selfless Hero to Tier 2 and Deadly Spore to Tier 5: Divine Shield/Poison endgame comps are super powerful, and can feel a little like old Murlocs. We think this is good to an extent, but the appearance rates for these 2 cards was just a bit too high.
Thanks for all these insights Cora! Makes a lot of sense. Reading the rag nerf makes it feel very weak now but eager to see if I’m wrong
It should push back Sulfuras on average by about a turn, but if it's activating on 9 or 10 gold we think that's probably still pretty good. Have to see of course.
We need Murlocs nerf, the sooner, the better. BG's is unplayable with Poisonous Murlocs.
We've discussed poisonous in Battlegrounds a lot internally, and if it should even exist. Murloc winrates have gone down a fair bit since we removed Gentle Megasaur though, and they're harder to build into. Our philosophy very well could and might change in the future though.
Comments
Po-gone!
I think what they should do with Poisonous is to limit it exclusively to minions that come pre-packaged with it, those currently being Deadly Spore and Maexxna. They should strip it off of Amalgadon adapts and remove Toxfin. That way you can't really just slap it onto a massive minion and have it farm two or three of your opponent's guys that've been built over the course of the whole game. It will be relegated to fragile, techy minions that serve a similar purpose to Unstable Ghoul.
As potentially busted and uncounterable as poisonous can be very deep into the lategame, I think it is necessary. Let's say you've made it to the final 2, both of you have been crushing, are very healthy. You square off, and you find that your opponent highrolled like a motherfucker. All other things being equal let's say they're like two or three turns ahead of you in scaling their build. Without poisonous being in the game, you're toast. You're likely to fight them at least two or three times before you die and there's just nothing you can do to alter your strategy. Without poisonous it's just big stuff against big stuff and their stuff is bigger. You can't ever catch up. There's no build switch you can make if it's all about stats.
Poisonous gives people the ability to adapt their build to their opponent, to catch up. To potentially counter strategies that revolve entirely around one ginormous dude (Pirates with a Taunted Looter, beefy Brann + Battlemaster, Garr) that would just farm all the minions you have and protect the squishies behind it. Poisonous lets you punch right through it, and if it's only available on small minions like the Spore or Maexxna, it gets one hit off to get you through that problematic minion and then the rest of your board has to take over. Poisonous + Divine Shield will not be as much of a problem because you then have to use Selfless + your poisonous minion to kill two enemy minions. So you trade evenly, 2 minions for 2 minions. Issues arise when the poisonous minion is big enough to survive hits even without divine shields. Spore is unlikely to get that big. Maexxna might but it takes a good deal of effort, or you have to already be running a Mama Bear/Goldrinn build to begin with. When it's not on Amalgadon or 50 health Murlocs, poisonous is fine and folds to anything with tokens, cleaves, secondary damage sources (whelps), divine shields, etc.
Who are these people still complaining about murlocs when they were among the only counters to elementals?
People will always complain about Murlocs. Poor adorable little buggers.
That's a weird explanation for Whirlwind Tempest. Considering only 4 cards can have Windfury (Crackling Cyclone, Zapp Slywick, Seabreaker Goliath and Amalgadon), and only the Cyclone can really benefit from it, I thought it was because its limited usability. Also, with it being a Tier 3 minion, it was already easy to triple for Mega-Windfury. So this essentially will have barely an impact.
I think the limited usability is why they're saying it wasn't a fun minion to have in the pool. In most situations it was just a tier 4 6/6 elemental, but in a very small amount of situations it could allow one windfury minion to completely remove half of the opponent's minions before those were able to do anything.
Al'Akir & Tempest giving cleave minions megawindfury or ds/p minions megawindfury was not fun.