Battlegrounds News & Clarifications – Lightfang Enforcer Nerf Next Patch (Dec 5th), Lich’Bazhial tested with 2 Damage HP, New MMR System, Performance Ugrades

When it comes to HS Battlegrounds, devs (mainly Mike Donais) are sharing lots of small pieces of information all around social media, on Twitch streams etc. I’ve decided to gather some most interesting one from the last few days, which give us more insight about the direction Battlegrounds is heading into. Let’s start!

Dec 5th will be the first client patch where we can address balance. We will continue to adjust balance as we get more data too of course. (Source)

Mike has confirmed what he already said on a stream before – December 5th will be the next client patch (most likely a Descent of Dragons pre-patch), and it will be the time they can add more balance changes. If you don’t remember, we also have two new minions and  three new heroes coming at that time!

Source: TidesOfTime Twitch chat, when talking about Lightfang Enforcer.

Yep, Lightfang is one of the cards that are going to be changed. Currently, it’s arguably the strongest card in the entire game, since it can snowball your setup in the late game incredibly easily, and it pays itself off basically after a single turn. Discovering an early Lightfang is a sure way into Top 4, and often a win too. We don’t know HOW the card will get nerfed, but some common ideas include moving it to Tier 6, removing some tribes from the buff pool (leaving it at 2 or 3 tribes) or reducing the buff to +1/+1. It’s hard to say what they will decide to go with, but it’s clear that the card WILL get changed in 2 weeks.

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

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

Lich Baz’hial was one of the four heroes removed in the last patch to make room for the new ones. They said that they are removing two strongest and two weakest heroes, which clearly means that Lich was among the bottom two. While the hero wasn’t terrible in hands of an experienced player, taking that much damage early usually resulted in a quick loss – at some point you couldn’t afford to hero power anymore, and you couldn’t afford to lose any games. However, it seems like the card is being tested at 2 damage instead of 3. It might not seem like a huge difference, but after using Hero Power 5 times, that’s 15 vs 10 damage you’re taking, so it adds up – it can easily mean surviving one more loss. Another interesting tidbit is that Floating Watcher is one of the minions coming next patch, and Lich would have a pretty cool synergy with it. However, I would guess that it would come at 3 stars, which might be a bit too late, as Lich stops using the Hero Power in mid game unless it’s really needed (plus Demons strategy of taking extra damage from Wrath Weaver is not the best synergy with Hero that already takes a lot of damage).

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. (Source)

After the recent MMR changes, some players got confused and assumed that the amount you’re getting is flat, which is not true. MMR you gain still depends on the MMR of your opponents – if you face lower rated players, then you will gain less and vice versa. That’s why it’s possible to finish #5 and still gain a few points, or finish #4 and lose a few points. However, the multiplier for facing people who are much lower/higher than you will probably get adjusted, as you can read above.

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

Another small big of info is that if you see a small gain/loss in your first game after patch, don’t worry, that’s how it’s supposed to work – 2nd game will start using the new system.

We are discussing and working on a bunch of ideas to improve performance on low end phones/GPUs etc.

And finally, the team is working on some performance improvements for slower phones and GPUs. Previously, Mike has already mentioned that they’re working on improving animations or straight up removing some of the unnecessary ones. A bunch of animations are pretty annoying and too slow, which is a big issue on mobile devices – sometimes you load into the Tavern way later than your opponents (and thus have less time), because you had to sit through lots of them.