Mike Donais has been busy answering questions about the recent Battlegrounds update over on reddit. Let us see what he has been talking about!

  • Lich Baz'hial is being playtested internally with Graveyard Shift that only deals 2 damage to self. She may return.
  • The first game you play post-update will still use the old MMR calculations. After that, the new system works.
  • Expect a blog later this week talking about how MMR works in Battlegrounds.
  • More adjustments will come to MMR. Mike believes the multiplier for playing people outside your skill area is off.

Also worth mentioning again from the update notes:

  • More heroes are rotating come December.
  • Two new minions are coming in December - Floating Watcher and a new card, King Bagurgle.
  • They do want to continue balancing heroes and minion tiers.

How do you feel about the recent updates to Battlegrounds? Are you looking forward to Battlegrounds updates more than the Descent of Dragons expansion itself? Let us know in the comments below!

Quote From Mike Donais

I wonder if Floating Watcher will still scale even if you have a Mal'Ganis on your board. If not, it definitely has a ceiling, since you can't really just keep hurting yourself.

I could see it snowballing quickly with Lich Bal'zial when she's eventually rotated back in, but they may just change her hero power outright anyway.

We are testing her at 2 damage internally and she is a bit better with Floating watcher, and of course stronger in general.

(Mike Donais)


That struck me too. I thought all this time that variations in MMR gain/loss at each place finish (in addition to, early on, how many games you've played) depended on the MMRs of the people you played against — as Donais himself seemed to confirm in this comment:

If the average MMR of the game is lower than yours (you got relatively easy opponents) then 4th place can cause an MMR loss. In these games you need top 3 to gain MMR.

/u/mdonais, could you please clarify?

Yes your opponent's MMR matters too, I just wanted the example in the patch notes to be simple. We are going to post a much more in depth blog written by Tian (data scientist) later this week with some more details.

(Mike Donais)


Elise seems very busted. Very comparable to AFKay. The rest seem okay. Floating Watcher should scale very, very well for demons but that wasn't a huge problem for them to begin with. Really would've liked to see amalgam move to T3 or T4 =/.

Demons were a bit low on actual demons in the shop, so adding a mid range demon seemed like a good idea.

(Mike Donais)


We’ve made adjustments to the number of points given for first place. In the original system, you got 240 points for a first place on your first game, and 24 pts for a first place on your 150th (or later) game. Now, you will get 190 pts for a first place on your first game and 95 pts for a first place on your 150th (or later) game.

Wait wait wait wait.. Doesn't that imply that the points gained/lost are completely independent of your opponent's MMR? You just flat out get X amount of points per win and that's it? The one and only thing that matters is how many games you've played so far?

Am I missing something here?

Your opponent's MMR affects the point gain also, my examples are assuming all opponents are the same rank as you.

I do think that the multiplier for playing people far below you or far above you is a bit off right now, so we are gathering some data and adjusting it in the future.

(Mike Donais)


Aww, I loved Lich. Hope she’s back at some point! Though clearly she was hard for a lot of players to figure out

We are considering bringing Lich back at some point with 2 damage instead of 3.

(Mike Donais)


We’ve made adjustments to the number of points given for first place. In the original system, you got 240 points for a first place on your first game, and 24 pts for a first place on your 150th (or later) game. Now, you will get 190 pts for a first place on your first game and 95 pts for a first place on your 150th (or later) game.

I've played about 40 games, just got 1st place (in a game with 3 of the new heroes), and only got 67 points. /u/mdonais are the MMR changes rolled out yet?

The way it is set up is the first game uses the old system then sets you to the new numbers.

(Mike Donais)


The MMR change takes 1 full game to take effect so the first game it will use the old numbers.

(Mike Donais)