Low Tier Letdown / Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Even in universe, characters know that the Magma Rager is Hearthstone's biggest Memetic Loser.

With a game with as many cards as Hearthstone, it was inevitable that some cards and decks would become infamous for being more worthwhile as Arcane Dust.

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Heroes/Specific Decks

Standard meta

• Priest in general has been something of a Butt-Monkey of a class, to the point that Blizzard had to completely overhaul it into a proper control class in the Year of the Phoenix. Historically, Priest has generally been weak, due to their cards being an inconsistent mix of control tools and combo enablers, with a few cards that steal from the opponent and makes them hurl their device across the room if you're lucky. Their early game tends to be meh at best outside of Northshire Cleric, especially with their lack of an evergreen 2-drop, meaning that Priest struggles with early tempo. However, the few times Priest does surface, it's because they've gotten a deck that either kills the opponent in one turn (e.g. Razakus, Velen + Malygos Resurrect) or shuts them down so hard that they might as well have been killed in one turn (e.g. Big Priest), none of which are particularly fun to play against. Given that Priest fluctuates between "impossible to play" and "impossible to play against" with no middle ground, it's no wonder that the class has relatively few fans.
• In the Classic set, Paladin is the class with the worst win rate. All of their cards are either garbage (all of their Secrets) or is completely reliant on having a board except for Truesilver Champion and Tirion Fordring, which is something rather difficult for them due to the fact that have really poor early game. In addition, their Jack of All Trades status means that can't even high-roll out a win compare to the other classes with bad Classic sets (namely Shaman and Priest).
• "Shaman Tier" was a running joke for all of 2015 because of just how trash Shaman was. A handful of their cards were RNG-based, the entire Overload mechanic was a useless dud because of its lack of synergy, and was curbstomped by the much more popular Paladin. League of Explorers managed to help them with Tunnel Trogg, which turns Overload into an advantage, and then Whispers of the Old Gods came around, where it all went downhill.
• For the year of the Kraken, some classes were sadly stuck in the dumpster:
  • Poor Paladin. After dominating the second half of 2015 with Secret Paladin, the Standard update denied them of their premium 2/3/4/5 mana curve of Shielded Minibot->Muster for Battle->Piloted Shredder->Sludge Belcher, and trying to replace it with control cards. N'Zoth Paladin was created as a result of these cards, and truth be told it wasn't that bad, but unfortunately it relied far too heavily on Doomsayer to get a lead, and the deck's sluggishness ultimately made it weaker than Warrior as a control deck. Karazhan slightly helped by giving them Ivory Knight, but Mean Streets of Gadgetzan utterly screwed them over by only giving them a single control card, compared to everybody else who got some shiny new toys to play with. Aggro Paladin was experimented with, but it was a dud in the end, and ultimately the year of the Kraken was not kind to our righteous friend.
  • Old Gods + Karazhan Priest is probably the worst class in the history of the game. Naxxramas and Goblins vs Gnomes added a lot of cards that made Priest an extremely stable control class in the meta (Zombie Chow, Deathlord, Lightbomb, Velen's Chosen), so the other expansions since then mostly focused on trying to give Priest tools to expand into other archetypes. However, once Standard rolled around, Priest lost the core of his set and ended up with a lot of experimental cards that didn't synergize. Not only that, but Whispers of the Old Gods was more of the same with Priest getting at least five different archetypes spread over nine cards. This ultimately left Priest with a lot of half-decks but no single complete deck to play other than Dragon Priest, which ended up being actually pretty horrible in a meta that can out-tempo it. Karazhan didn't help much either, only adding another healing card, a new resurrection, and, well, Purify, but Mean Streets of Gadgetzan finally managed to save the class by giving it nothing but good cards, including the straight up broken Drakonid Operative.
  • While League of Explorers was kind to Rogue, giving them Tomb Pillager and several control decks to feast on, 2016 was rough for them. Most of the decks from this period were either very fast aggro or fast midrange, both of which take advantage of the weaknesses of the Rogue's hero power and lack of board clears/healing, causing them to die very quickly. Old Gods and Karazhan didn't help much, attempting to give Rogue an alternative role as a "for fun" class, giving them high-RNG cards that give cards from the opponent's class. It's a popular mechanic, but not one that Rogue needed, leaving their players despairing. Like with Priest, Mean Streets saved the day; while most of the Rogue cards were garbage, the buffs to Pirates and the addition of Counterfeit Coin substantially helped Rogue's early game and gave them the ability to race aggro decks without trading their control-killing ability, inadvertently making them a tier-1 class, according to statistics.
  • Hunter, after two years of being the best aggro class, shifted gears to midrange when Standard hit. They had sticky minions, consistent face damage with their hero power, and one of the game's best lategame bombshells in Call of the Wild. Then the Karazhan nerfs came, and Hunters suddenly realized that their precious Call of the Wild was the only reason they had been winning. Without it, Hunters weaknesses became clear; bad card draw, no healing, bad board clears, and once their Savannah Highmanes were dealt with, no way to actually win the game. They were stuck with Secret Hunter, a deck base around Clocked Huntress' ability to cheat out secrets to gain more tempo than the opponent can handle. It worked until Mean Streets and Un'Goro released, which gave most classes the ability to deal Hunter's stuff while not receiving much themselves, leaving them stuck with no power and nothing interesting to play with.
• The core idea of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan is that the three gangs are supposed to provide a triangle of balance. The Grimy Goons lose to the Kabal's control game, the Kabal loses to the Jade Lotus's value game, and the Jade Lotus loses to the Grimy Goons's aggro game. Kabal decks are good against Goons decks and Lotus decks are good against Kabal decks... but Goons decks just aren't good. The only Lotus deck that sees a lot of play is Jade Druid, and because of Druid's ramp abilities and beefy taunts the Goons are incapable of actually racing them down while Jade Shaman is just an Aggro shell with a few Jade cards put in. This means that Goons decks are pretty much unplayed and hard aggro decks like Pirate Warrior and Aggro Shaman take their place because they actually are fast enough to race Jade Druid. Warrior is held up entirely by their pirate synergies while Paladins and Hunters might as well not be classes.
• After dominating the game ever since launch, Warlock would fall into this after the release of Journey to Un'Goro both in power level and in popularity. The Standard Rotation took out many of the class's core cards that defined many viable archetypes like Reno Jackson, Imp Gang Boss, and Dark Peddler, while Power Overwhelming was kicked into Hall of Fame for being too flexible, severely hampering both the Zoolock and Control Warlock archetype. What they got for Un'Goro is a set that pushed Discard - a universally hated playstyle because of its inconsistency with a Quest Reward that took too long to get value out of. The loss of many Neutral healing sources and the fact that many other classes received strong cards pushed Warlock out from the meta due to not having any niche that other classes can't just do better: Can't manipulate the board as efficient as Paladin, Shaman and Druid, can't play as aggressive as Pirate Warrior, can't generate value, healing, outlast, cheat out big minions or have good anti-aggression tools as much as Priest and Taunt Warrior, can't burst down the opponent as much as Mage and Rogue and can't draw cards as efficiently as Rogue. That said, Knights of the Frozen Throne went on to renew Warlock with plenty of minions that granted buffs for Zoo decks and extremely potent survival tools and board clear like Bloodreaver Gul'dan and Defile for Handlock.
• Knights of the Frozen Throne introduced several Freeze-themed cards, befitting the overall set theme. Problem is that a lot of these Freeze cards are for Shaman, and focused on a rather gimmicky strategy of freezing your own minions for buffs or a singular minion for nominal value. Not only was Shaman's existing Freeze synergies non-existent, meaning it had to rely on several of the new cards to function, but freezing your own minions was just terrible in virtually any situation and its cornerstone cards were just as bad to boot; Ice Breaker is terrible without a Frozen minion to smack and would accumulate a lot of hero damage on you for trading, and Moorabi has abysmal stats for an effect that's just Convert on freeze. The Frozen Recipes Tavern Brawl featured a Frozen Throne deck recipe for each class; Freeze Shaman for this Brawl was an easy way to experience everything wrong with the strategy. Years later, Dean Ayala admitted that efficient Freeze effects aren't fun to play against, but it was too late to redesign every Shaman card in the set. So, they deliberately nerfed the package to unplayability before launch instead. Years later, Fractured in Alterac Valley would see the team give the archetype another go, this time giving Shaman better Freeze cards. While cards like Snowfall Guardian, Wildpaw Cavern, and Windchill all see play, none of the actual Freeze synergy cards — old or new — are good enough to use still.
• Warrior fell into the absolute bottom tier during the Knights of the Frozen Throne and Kobolds & Catacombs period. Their cards from the expansions themselves are rather underwhelming compared to the other classes in both Control and Aggro department. They were held up entirely by their Pirate synergy... until the Fiery War Axe was nerfed from 2 to 3 mana, destroying their early-game control tools by making the weapon one of the worst ones in the game. The only other Warrior deck in the meta is the Dead Man's Hand deck, focused on dragging out the game through repeatedly shuffling its hand into the library and winning through fatigue, but that deck also is really difficult to play well. It's also extremely boring to play against since the Warrior can simply keep clearing the board and gaining armor faster than you can kill him, often resulting in unbearably long, drawn-out, and frustrating games, and let's not even get started on mirror matches.
• Discard Warlock, one of the most widely derided archetype in the game that has gotten an overly lengthy support. The idea behind the archetype, when it actually became one, was to use your discard effects to gain advantages on the board, with cards that benefit from being discarded and cards that are above the curve in terms of cost. In practice, it was an unplayable, RNG-heavy mess, with the randomized nature of discards often leading to players discarding things they really don't want to discard, and the few cards you want to discard stubbornly refusing to be discarded. Not to mention, throwing away cards willy-nilly for minions and effects that are only slightly more powerful than average means you run out of steam depressingly quickly, allowing your opponent to easily curb-stomp you once you're out of cards to throw at them, and Life Tap only helps so much. Finally, Discard Warlock never received anything resembling a win condition, instead having to rely on tools from other archetypes to actually finish off the opponent or going full-on aggro. Despite Blizzard stubbornly refusing to let go of the archetype and adding trickles of cards over multiple expansions (in turn drawing the ire of Warlock players that wished Blizzard would use the card slots to boost archetypes that actually see play), for a very long time it ranked somewhere between "low-tier" and "unplayable". The only times Discard Warlock was considered decent was during Karazhan, where it was mostly a Captain Ersatz of a typical Zoolock with Malchezaar's Imp to reload, and in Rastakhan's Rumble, where Blizzard finally wised up and gave cards that gave some value back from discarding stuff, where it was still mostly overshadowed by regular Zoolock in Standard.
• Shuffle Warlock, an archetype which was supposedly created in Rise of Shadows, is about the closest archetype that is considered a meme deck. In its birth, the deck had only one win condition; load up your hand, play Plot Twist with Fel Lord Betrug or Dollmaster Dorian, and summon a bunch of expensive Deathrattle minions in one go, and if things go south, play Arch-Villain Rafaam and hope you get good legendaries. The problem with the deck is obvious; you have to load up your deck with a bunch of expensive, low-tempo minions and wait until you draw the few cards you need to get the ball rolling. It doesn't help other intended support cards that shuffled in Felhound Portals ended up being far too weak to be of any use. The following expansion did make things a little better for Shuffle Warlock with Supreme Archaeology by adding with more RNG win conditions (although it now also has the option of playing a slow OTK deck). Basically, with Shuffle Warlock you either highroll the hell out of the opponent or lose before you even get to do any of your random shenanigans, and it was usually the latter.
• While Shaman was busy tearing up the meta with their Galakrond at the start of Descent of Dragons, Galakrond Priest became the expansion's punchline, with winrates hovering between the low 40s and the low 20s. The Priest version of Galakrond has by far the slowest Invoke effect in the game, which isn't good in a metagame dominated by fast aggro from the likes of Rogue, Shaman, Hunter, and even Warrior. The Invoke also has too much variance to be reliable, especially when compared to Rogue's Lackies and the other classes' tempo plays, since it can easily spit out useless junk like Lightwell and Test Subject. As such, when Galakrond does see play, it was either to use Fate Weaver combos rather than because they actually want his hero power, or just Galakrond on his own with little to no Invoke cards, which are deemed way too slow and greedy to use when his Hero Power alone can suffice. Galakrond Priest was eventually redeemed in Ashes of Outland which gave it the control and value cards it needed to compete with other classes (along with a rotation that brought classes like Shaman down to size).
• Forged in the Barrens introduced Self-Mill Warlock. No, you didn't read that wrong- this deck archetype actually does revolve around drawing and burning cards from your deck until it's empty. And don't worry, there is actually a payoff: if your deck's empty, the legendary minion Neeru Fireblade creates a portal that summons imps for you, akin to the Un'Goro quest. The problem is that (A), you could accidentally mill or destroy him unless you kept him in the mulligan, leaving you stuck with a dead card for a good while; (B), the imps are 3/2s and are summoned only at the end of your turn, which, given that your opponent likely still has tools to clear the board with, isn't much of an issue for them; and (C), getting to the point where Neeru activates still means intentionally burning through your deck. While United in Stormwind did bring the self-mill synergy cards to meta relevance, to wasn't for any of their actual merits - rather, it was the broken interaction that the Warlock quest has with fatigue damage. Tellingly, Neeru is not one of the cards that gets played in those lists, and that variation isn't even the strongest Quest Warlock.
• While Splendiferous Whizbang's various decks are more meant for fun than competitive viability, there's one deck of the 13 in particular that makes players groan whenever they get stuck with it: Warrior’s Deck of Villains. It's themed around the five leaders of the League of E.V.I.L., and thus has cards related to that… but there are several major issues with it. The deck itself has some very questionable choices for cards that either are useless on their own (like Dr. Boom's Scheme), or are put into the deck with no real synergy (such as including the normally very powerful Dr. Boom, Mad Genius with no mechs to take advantage of his Battlecry with), and it has no clear win condition, with the more high-end cards being things like cool but weak Arch-Villain Rafaam and Arch-Thief Rafaam. It's also extremely boring compared to the rest of Whizbang's decks, even compared to its Good Counterpart in Paladin's Deck of Heroes, which has several powerful highlander payoffs and has a genuinely stable game plan. The deck eventually recieved a significant rework, removing a lot of the weaker cards to give the deck a clearer, Lackey-centric gameplan.
• Surprisingly, Mage of all classes fell into this at the release of Whizbang's Workshop. A lot of their new cards focused on a no minion theme, which had worked in the past but ultimately wound up being far too slow in the face of a meta dominated by Paladin Tempo and Hunter Aggro, and simultaneously not instantaneous enough to deal with Control Warrior. The loss of many direct damage spells in the rotation also left their Sif OTK decks with much less options, eliminating the two primary Mage decks right out the gate. Their Castle Nathria support, which had formed the backbone of many Mage decks, also rotated out, which also left Mage without good ways to build a board state or keep themselves alive in the early game. It's so bad that when Hearthstone Top Decks published their meta deck report at the start of the expansion, Mage was completely left out due to being so overwhelmed by the shift they had no viable decks in Standard to speak of.

Other

• Originally, Arena Warrior. Warrior was considered the absolute bottom of the barrel in that play mode. Why? His hero power does absolutely nothing to the board, his best cards weren't commons. ^note in arena you only guaranteed to have 5 cards that are rarer than common And to top it all off, warrior decks are either reliant on extremely rare cards, or huge combo's with time to set up. All of those are a luxury you don't have in arena, because most decks are simply putting out a minion every turn, killing you before you can set up your combo. It got so bad that ADWCTA ^note the creators of heartharena and a very popular tier list started a campaign called #ArenaWarriorsMatter to call attention to this problem. League of Explorers laid the groundwork for giving Arena Warriors help while Whispers of the Old Gods saved the day.
• Warrior has the greatest difficulty winning a Dungeon Run. Their card pools are extremely specific in synergy with Treasures and with each other, which means that your deck can end up very disjointed and clunky simply out of bad luck. This isn't helped by the fact that their card pool has very little board clear compare to Mage and Priest (the other two Control-favored classes in this mode) as well as their early game cards that were offered has a very steep decline in power if not played on curve or without drawing their synergy, meaning that you can very realistically lose to the 4th-7th boss while trying to build a Control Warrior deck to even stand a chance against the Final Bosses.
• Toki, the Time Tinker class is this for the Monster Hunt. Her card pool is incredibly RNG-reliance and inconsistent compare to the other classes while being saddled with a Hero Power (Temporal Loop) that does nothing except for you to restart your turn (and thus allow for re-roll on your random effects). One of the main strategy for the Hagatha fight is to play Toki as early as possible so you can refill your deck and got the passive and board clear while not being saddled with her terrible Hero Power.
  • Toki also draws flak for having a much weaker starting deck than the other classes. Out of the ten-odd cards she begins with, no fewer than three (Mad Bomber, Tinkmaster Overspark, and Blingtron) possess horrendously unreliable RNG-based effects. As such, these are generally only ever used when her hero power is available as a safety net as they can easily screw you over twice in a row, which often leaves only about a third of her deck to work with if they refuse to give you a decent outcome; this also makes some of the early bosses much harder than they probably should be.
• Reno Jackson is the weakest of the hero class for Tomb of Terror. Over half of his Signature Treasures and even one of his Hero Power ("Relicologist") are too reliant on casting spells (with two of them, the two Tomb Divers, took an extra steps and require him to play Secrets), which mean that if the player is unlucky and encounter minions heavy cards pool, a lot of them can end up useless or underwhelming. What worse is that he is a Mage / Rogue hybrid, two of the most infamous Glass Cannon class in the game. This mean he can die very easily to swarm strategy due to the lack of healing, Taunt and board clear, especially compare to the other spell-casting but high survivability and board clear-heavy Priest / Druid hybrid hero Elise Starseeker.
• In Wild, Hunter has long been the worst class in the format. The class has a chronic lack of control tools and card draw, instead focusing on Boring, but Practical tempo and aggro playstyles. This unfortunately made their cards very susceptible to power creep, as control classes just keep getting better at shutting them down, other aggro classes can race them down easily while also having more fuel in the tank, and combo decks from Priest and Druid can set up kill turns much faster than the average Hunter can kill them. The addition of Prince Renathal giving a lot of decks more health for Hunters to burst down didn't help matters either, nor does the class's lack of build variety since everything that isn't aggro or midrange inevitably struggles with staying power and consistency.

Card

Constructed

For further reading, the Hearthstone wiki keeps a list of the cards that most players consider the worst in the game.

• In the classic format, there's Millhouse Manastorm, a Legendary card that costs 2 mana and is a 4/4 with the Battlecry "Enemy spells cost (0) next turn." It has been the source of mockery, and prior to Hemet and Executus' arrival, Millhouse was regarded as the worst legendary ever because its battlecry has the potential for disaster — an overstatted minion does you no good if your opponent can send a Pyroblast or two your way, Mind Control for free to steal your board, draw cards and set up combos without any mana cost whatsoever, nuke your entire HP pool with Antonidas, and so on. The only time it was playable in a serious deck was the time Call to Arms was abused in Even Paladin decks, allowing you to get Millhouse out without activating his battlecry, in which case he was a formidable minion to have (that is, as long as you didn't get him in your opening hand or as a topdeck).
• Goblins vs Gnomes introduced Hemet Nesingwary, a Legendary card with the Battlecry "destroy a Beast". It almost instantly became one of the most widely-mocked cards in the game thanks to both the incredibly situational Battlecry and its dreadful statline - a 5 mana card with 6/3, which meant that it was easily killed by three- or two-drops as soon as it hit the board.
• Flame Leviathan was another infamous trainwreck of a card from Goblins vs. Gnomes. Its mediocre 7-mana 7/7 statline is made up for by the effect to... deal 2 damage to everything when drawn. While this didn't seem terrible on paper, the fact that you had no control over when this effect occurred (Mage had no ways to selectively draw cards in general, let alone Mechs, back when this was printed) meant that any chance of it being a free boardwipe was far outweighed by the possibility that it would nuke your own minions, do nothing, or kill you outright after you used an Ice Block. It's quite telling that barring a best case scenario, you were almost wholly better off playing War Golem instead. Like a lot of crappy Wild cards, Flame Leviathan was thrown a bone in Caverns of Time, which made it no longer damage Mechs (making it less of a liability in Mech builds) and gave it Rush; this still wasn't enough to make it particularly playable since most of its problems persist, and Mages weren't exactly starved for removal anyway.
• Released in Blackrock Mountain was Majordomo Executus, a 9/7 for 9 mana, with the deathrattle of replacing your hero with Ragnaros the Firelord. 9 mana minions are generally required to be the most powerful ones in the game, as 9 mana almost always requires a player's entire turn. Executus is... not. Not only is his statline dreadful for his cost and pretty easy to kill, Ragnaros himself is pretty underwhelming; not only does he have a mere 8 health and almost always causes the player to take damage when he is summoned, his hero power does 8 damage to a random enemy, which is highly unreliable and underpowered. Many have attempted to make him work, but ultimately Executus can't even be used as a comedy card because Ragnaros will do nothing and die. However, the wasted potential is only half the problem; by simply existing, Executus managed to make Sneed's Old Shredder and Recombobulator and any cards like them very risky to use, as he is the only card in the game that can cause a player to lose the game without any RNG involved. He sucks so much he indirectly nerfed two of the funnest cards in the game.
  • With the advent of The Grand Tournament and the various Hero Power-affecting abilities, Mage specifically might be able to make use of Ragnaros. It's still rather impractical to perform, but goodness gracious, multiple 8-damage fireballs being launched everywhere is nothing to sneeze at.
• Acidmaw from The Grand Tournament, easily a strong contender for the worst legendary in the game even years later. Its stats are an abysmal 4/2 for 7 mana with the effect to destroy any other minion that takes damage and was intended to be used along Dreadscale^note 3-mana 4/2 that deals 1 damage to all other minions at the end of your turn as a board-clearing control combo, but the pair were given to Hunter, one of the worst control classes in the game (to say nothing of the combo requiring 2 specific Legendaries in a class with little card draw). It would also be somewhat good with other cheap area-of-effect damage, except Hunter doesn't have that either, so all it does is let your opponent clear your board more easily by just pinging your minions with a weak area spell, which probably also kills off Acidmaw in the process due to its pathetic health and sets you back 7 whole mana. It's also a dreadful card to randomly spawn on your board, because it can get all your minions killed through no fault of your own. It was also powercrept with the addition of Deathstalker Rexxar (can build a Zombeast that deals damage and has Poisonous for same effect and less mana, such as a Poisonous Dreadscale) and Serpentbloom (0 mana spell that gives a beast Poisonous and can be slapped to Dreadscale, resulting in only 3 mana spent to clear the whole board), which are infinitely more playable and see far more use than Acidmaw could ever hope to. Taverns of Time buffed Acidmaw to 3 mana and made its effect only work on enemy minions and made Dreadscale no longer damage your own minions, meaning that comboing the two is actually feasible now and Acidmaw itself is no longer abysmally understatted, though the two still aren't particularly good (and the aforementioned Serpentbloom still does Acidmaw's intended job much better).
• There are a handful of cards that are by no means bad, but don't get any use due to them not actually having a use in the meta. For example, Arcane Nullifier X-21 is ultimately a better early-game Taunt than the Shieldmasta due to its immunity to spell targeting, but because most aggro decks use battlecries to silence Taunts, most players would rather risk spell removal for the extra attack. Similarly, it's noted Master of Disguise granting permanent Stealth would be overpowered if given to any class that could actually abuse it. Unfortunately, Rogue isn't one of them, and Master of Disguise never gets used outside of "What If" scenarios. Part of the problem was that the developers knew how overpowered it could potentially be and avoided giving Rogue cards it could combo with effectively, and it was finally nerfed in Whispers of the Old Gods to only grant Stealth for one turn to make it less limiting from a design perspective.
  • This is one of the core problems with class legendaries, as it frequently seems like Blizzard designs them for decks they want to see exist instead of decks that actually exist. A perfect example of this is Malorne, the Druid legendary for Goblins Vs Gnomes. A 9/7 for 7 is in fact overstatted, and its ability to keep returning itself to your deck means it would win any control matchup by repeatedly delaying fatigue damage. The problem with him? Druid can't play control decks. They literally can't, Druid's main weakness in card design is never being given good removal options. Malorne would be a top-tier legendary if given to Warrior or Priest, but in the hands of Druid he's essentially not a card; this would eventually result in him being reworked to instead go Dormant on death and revive when two of your Beasts die, making him more of a tempo tool. Another good example is Varian Wrynn, the Warrior legendary for The Grand Tournament. A 7/7 for 10, his effect is to draw three cards and directly summon any minions drawn with his effect. A very potent ability for tempo decks... but Warrior didn't really have tempo decks. It had aggro decks which don't want to survive to turn 10, control decks that don't want to rush to fatigue, and combo decks that don't want to ruin their combo pieces. It took until Whispers of the Old Gods for Warrior to have a tempo deck worth playing, and Varian finally saw some play there.
  • It is worth mentioning that the main problem with some legendaries that don't see play is that you actually have to include them in a deck. There are plenty of videos of players acquiring legendaries through the effects of other cards and proceeding to dominate the game with them. A good example is Anub'arak, a nine mana 8/4 that leaves a 4/4 on the board and returns to your hand when it dies. In regular play it's considered too slow and a waste of a deck slot. But if you can get it on the board without including it in your deck then its effect can potentially win the game by itself.
• There’s a lot of useless cards but the one that is absolutely at the bottom is Magma Rager. This 5/1 for 3 mana is absolutely useless against any sort of board clears, spells that can do damage or something as simple as a Silver Hand Recruit or any 1-cost minion that lives long enough to attack. It's so useless it has achieved Memetic Loser status by the fandom, and even Blizzard thinks that it’s the worst card in the game. It's so useless that some parallels to the Rager were made for the sole purpose of mocking it (Ice Rager, Am'gam Rager, Shadow Rager), yet those cards still didn't see play despite being strictly better than Magma Rager. It wasn't until Rise of Shadows introduced Faceless Rager that a Rager finally became playable, and even then Silence Priest was pretty much the only deck to actually use it.
• Perhaps second to Magma Rager in uselessness is Silverback Patriarch. This 3-mana Basic 1/4 Beast with Taunt was already outclassed from the get-go with Ironfur Grizzly, a 3-mana 3/3 Beast with Taunt, also in the Basic set. Over time, Silverback Patriarch would be outclassed by even more cards, like Stonehill Defender who exchanges the Beast tag for the ability to discover more taunts (like another copy of itself!), or Tar Creeper which has more health and gains extra attack on the opponent's turn. Even the Hearthstone wiki takes the piss out of Silverback Patriarch, with an entire article devoted to listing cards that are strictly better than it.
• In the classic druid spells, Savagery is easly the worst of the bunch. It deals damage equal to your hero's attack to a minion...given to a class that seldom uses attack buffs outside hero power or Savage roar, and in both cases this 1 mana spell is a waste of deck slot compared to better alternatives for minion removal, especially if you are topdecking and have no way to get respectable attack to make it worth it. Even with later additions to hero damage buff in Rastakhan's Rumble, Savagery is still too impractical to be of any genuine use. Years later, with the release of United in Stormwind and its attack related cards, Savagery was finally Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, being useful for what it was meant to do. For all of five minutes, at least, until Rake came along, which is literally the same thing as Savagery but has a built-in Attack buff taped on, waiving the need to combo it with other cards and consigning Savagery to the trash heap once more.
• Purify: a 2-mana card that silences your own minion and draws you a card if you do so. Whispers of the Old Gods left Priest in a bad state in both ranked play and Arena. What the class really needed were good common cards for both constructed and arena. What they got was one of the most situational cards in the game. To add insult to injury, the 1-mana card Power Word: Shield gives a minion +2 health instead of silencing, a card from the Classic set, actually has regular use. Already before One Night in Karazhan's release, people were up in arms because of this card. Senior game designer Ben Brode quickly put out a video announcing the card would not appear in Arena, simmering down the rage a little. However, the card was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in a big way with Journey to Un'Goro giving it many indirect support cards like Shadow Visions, Lyra the Sunshard, Radiant Elemental and Humongous Razorleaf.
• Remember the push for Freeze Shaman in Knights of the Frozen Throne, mentioned in Low-Tier Decks? Well, the Legendary minion Moorabi was the crowning jewel of that mess. For starters, he is a 6 mana 4/4. That's the same statline as Gadgetzan Auctioneer and The Mistcaller - cards with HUGE effects. Moorabi's effect? Whenever a minion is frozen, you add a copy of it to your hand. He has no immediate board presence or value, requiring you to pump more mana into his terrible body. The result is glacially slow, needing even more mana to replay the frozen minions. To make it even slower, the only consistent way to copy good minions is to set up your own, meaning you have to freeze your own board. Even in the control meta that was KFT, it was too much setup and not even near enough value. Adding insult to injury, Moorabi was upstaged by Grumble, the Shaman Legendary from the very next expansion. Not only is Grumble overstatted for his cost, he lets you replay your cards much quicker and more efficiently than Moorabi could ever dream.
• For the most part, the upgraded Hero Powers provided by Justicar Trueheart and Baku the Mooneater are pretty cool. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Totemic Slam, the upgraded Shaman power. Where every other class gets a direct statistical improvement, Shaman instead gets the ability to choose which totem they summon. Generally, the Shaman doesn't care which totem they get turn-by-turn, and isn't going to get much use warping their deck or paying 6 mana just to normalize the times when they do. The only plus side it has is that it lets you have more than one of each Totem, which is faint praise if ever there was. It did see some play for a bit with Odd Shaman decks when it got more odd-cost Totem synergy cards like Ey'Sor, and combined it with Spell Damage-related cards like Spirit Claws and Ras Frostwhisper, but it was generally worse than Even Shaman and the removal of Wrath of Air Totem killed off its viability.
• Dr. Boom's Scheme from Rise of Shadows, a new contender for the position of absolute worst card in the game. 4 mana for a whopping 1 armor is simply beyond terrible, and while it ramps up over time in your hand like the other Scheme cards, 1 armor per turn means you need to hold the damn thing for around eleven turns just to make it nearly worth the mana cost. It doesn't help that Warrior already has Shield Block, a cheaper armor spell that's way better than Dr. Boom's Scheme could ever hope to be by virtue of drawing you a card and not requiring you to keep it in hand for half an eternity. You know a card's utterly terrible when people compare it unfavorably to Magma Rager. Years later, Dean Ayala revealed in a Q&A that the card was the result of a last-minute redesign^*It originally dealt 1 damage to all minions (scaling), which was wisely given to Shaman instead, explaining the disconnect between the art and effect.
• Worgen Greaser is infamous among the fans for being one of the most blatant "pack filler" cards in the game - a card printed simply to fill the card quota for a new expansion and nothing more, and it's not hard to see how this conclusion came about. Nobody in their right mind would run a 4-mana 6/3 with no abilities whatsoever, since it can easily be removed by minions and spells that cost half as much, especially since Chillwind Yeti exists. Even in Arena, getting this guy to stick around long enough to attack probably means you're winning already. Worgen Greaser was rubbished so badly by the fanbase that the developers apologized for it, promising cards with more interesting effects in the future. Ever since this disaster of a card, vanilla minions have been few and far between (with many unremarkable commons at least getting Taunt), and the few that were printed at least have a reasonable statline. Years later, Worgen Greaser was buffed to a 6/4 as part of an April Fools' Day joke, which, while still terrible, at least makes him worth the mana. Caverns of Time would later buff him even more to a 6/5, making him overstatted for the cost and a strictly better Chillwind Yeti (which he only gets away with by being Wild-exclusive, as not many decks in Wild would consider running a vanilla beatstick).
• In the lead-up to Journey to Un'Goro, Quests were heavily promoted as a new way to play the game and many were excited to see the possibilities they opened up. Out of the 9 Quests, however, two of them ended up being rather disappointing:
  • The Paladin Quest, The Last Kaleidosaur requires the player to cast six spells on their minions, forcing their deck into an unusual saturation of buff spells to try and get this to work. If they succeed, though, their reward is Galvadon, a 5 mana 5/5 that adapts 5 times on entry. While the concept of customizing your finisher is seemingly appealing, the fact that adapt options are randomly picked each time detracts from Galvadon's potential - especially if the player ends up being forced to pick between non-stackable effects like Taunt, Stealth or Windfury. That is also not mention that because the deck is so reliant on the Quest to actually finish the game since all of the buff cards do not generate enough values or tempo, if the opponent somehow manage to remove Galvadon the Paladin most likely will face an instant loss. This is very likely to happen as, in Hearthstone, minion removal is generally more efficient than minions, meaning placing all your faith on a single big minion is like placing all your eggs in one basket that has a big hole in the bottom. Even if he gains Shroud, Divine Shield and Stealth from his evolutions, he can still die instantly to something as simple as Deadly Shot^note 3 mana Hunter spell which destroys a random enemy minion, ignoring all possible defensive Adaptations because it doesn't target or deal damage.
  • The Warlock Quest, Lakkari Sacrifice, requires the player to discard six cards, making them reliant on the random and hated discard mechanic — even though the Warlock has Silverware Golem and Clutchmother Zavas which synergize with discard, they're equally likely to accidentally discard their other discard enablers. The reward is also rather unspectacular, being a portal that constantly summons two 3/2 Imps. The idea was for the Warlock to play a more control-oriented game and grind down the opponent with neverending imps, but the need to discard runs contrary to control's idea of keeping card advantage and the risk of discarding board control tools is far too great to ignore. Lakkari Sacrifice ultimately combines a requirement you don't want to fulfill (because discarding any card other than Silverware Golem and Clutchmaster Zavas does nothing to advance your gameplay agenda, while almost all the other quest requirements are at least things you might do in a normal game anyway) with a massively underwhelming reward (the constant stream of imps are not nearly powerful enough to make up for the amount of tempo lost simply getting the damn portal into play in the first place, assuming you even live long enough to do so). The quest became a little less useless when Kobolds & Catacombs released Cataclysm, a 4-mana spell that destroys all minions and discards your entire hand, letting you complete the quest and open up an opportunity to play the Nether Portal next in one fell swoop, and Rastakhan's Rumble gave Discard Warlock some cards that the archetype actually needed, which at least made the deck playable. On the other hand, Discard Warlock mostly favored a tempo game plan, which meant Lakkari Sacrifice often still didn't make the cut because it was just too slow.
• Following Pogo-Hopper's mana cost reduction from 2 to 1, it's popularity spiked from pure meme to... meme that highrolls really hard. Sure it doesn't have the same self-fueling cycle as Jade Druid, but Rogues have access to cards such as Witchwood Piper, Lab Recruiter, Shadowstep and so on, that the point is practically moot. The scariest part is how the Hopper gets +2/+2 and that it is a Battlecry, meaning it works with Barista Lynchen and Spirit of the Shark. The latter in particular allows you to deploy Hoppers with disgusting amount of stats very early and seal the game. However, if the card doesn't come together, it's left a pile of inefficient, slow minions, and ultimately is simply playing vanilla stats without another win condition.
• While The Last Kaleidosaur was generally underpowered but still had a few highlights and Lakkari Sacrifice eventually became tolerable in Rastakhan's Rumble, Raid the Sky Temple had far less luck its fellow bad quests and performed far, far below expectations. Not only does the quest take a while to complete, the Hero Power you get for its reward is best described as "garbage". You pay 2 mana to get a random (not Discover) Mage spell that costs 2 less, which is not worth sacrificing the flexibility of a basic Fireblast because the majority of those spells will be some degree of garbage. Not only is the variance huge, Mage already has dozens of better cards that generate cards much more effectively. It's so bad, in fact, it was statistically proven via stat trackers that players had a higher win rate when they mulliganed the quest.
• The other terrible Quest from Saviors of Uldum is Hack the System. On the one hand, the Hero Power given as a reward isn't too terrible on paper - summoning a 4/3 for 2 mana and refreshing itself when your Hero attacks is at least pretty decent value. The problem is the requirement: forcing you to attack five times with your Hero. Warrior had no way to attack multiple times in a turn in this card's Standard tenure, meaning you have to build your deck around being able to have a weapon equipped all the time or otherwise you just complete the Quest too late to matter (and even if you do swing every turn you're not completing this before turn 6), and having enough weapons in your deck to consistently do this means cutting down on everything else; this also means you only ever get to use the Hero Power up to twice a turn. You die to aggro and midrange because you have no tempo on board and fold to the pressure (and having to remove minions every turn by hitting them with your face), and you die to control because they have no problem handling a pair of vanilla 4/3 tokens every turn. And just to add salt to the wound, the most consistent way to complete the Quest without playing a horrible deck is to run Warrior's Galakrond package, which defeats the point of using the Quest in the first place because turning into Galakrond replaces your Hero Power. In Wild, Warrior at least has Fool's Bane to let them attack multiple times, but that requires the opponent to have minions that you can mash your face into multiple times and the reward just isn't that good by Wild standards.
• Surrender to Madness is a 3-mana Priest spell that gives all minions in your deck +2/+2... at the cost of setting you back three whole Mana Crystals. This means that, slowness of drawing the buffed minions aside, it actually gives you an overall tempo loss, especially since it makes it much harder to play spells. Furthermore, the buff is best suited to an aggressive style, and it's stuck on a 3-mana "do nothing immediately" card given to the worst aggro class in the game. Fortunately, Blizzard eventually learned from this trainwreck when they printed Embiggen, which follows the concept of Surrender to Madness (large deck buff offset by a mana-based disadvantage) but does it in such a way as to be actually playable.
• With the Core set revamp, the five Dragon Aspects received modern reimaginings with better effects. Only one failed to see play: Nozdormu the Eternal. He is now a 7 mana 8/8 with the Start of Game effect to set each turn timer to 15 seconds permanently... on the condition that he's in both players' decks. There is little incentive to play a barely better-than-vanilla beatstick on ladder, so his wacky effect will never trigger. This negates the entire point of running the card, since he's otherwise very boring. Fans latched on to the design however, and Blizzard eventually declared the 15th of every month to be Nozdormu Day, releasing a legendary quest on that day each month to encourage its use in the future.
• Kidnap is quite possibly the single worst Secret ever printed. It's a 2-mana Rogue Secret that activates whenever your opponent plays a minion, at which point the minion is stuffed in a 0/4 Sack and the opponent has to destroy it to get the minion back in their hand. A minor disruption effect that would be "meh" on its own, but there's a catastrophic side effect that makes the card worse than useless: it doesn't negate Battlecries. What this means is that a clever opponent can use your own Secret against you to duplicate any Battlecry they want, stuffing the minion of their choice in the Sack and getting it back in their hand once they blow it up. Kidnap's bottom-of-the-barrel power level is especially noteworthy as it was one of exactly 3 Rogue Secrets in standard at the time of Castle Nathria's release, meaning that the highly-pushed Secret Rogue archetype ended up being dead on arrival and the class as whole crashed into bottom-tier as a result.

Battlegrounds

Heroes

• Patchwerk had a hero power that gave him 20 extra starting health. This was considered fairly good, letting him more easily stomach early losses so that he can safely rush to higher tiers and return the favor with better minions. However, Blizzard evidently thought it was too good and nerfed the health bonus from 20 to 10. This resulted in Patchwerk plummeting in tier lists, going from one of the stronger heroes to one of the worst, as the lowered health bonus means he now struggles to even survive a single extra round. Even getting buffed to 55, but never quite being redeemed. Patch 24.2 decided to completely undo his nerf by giving him 60 health again, and with Armor Tiers he actually has more effective health than he did at the start, but with his Hero Power being very Boring, but Practical by today's Battlegrounds standards, he'll likely remain average at best.
• Reno Jackson's flashy Hero Power made him a popular hero in casual brackets, but in higher brackets he was one of the worst. His ability to make a single minion Golden is interesting, but considering that it just upgrades the minion and doesn't put it in your hand (meaning no Battlecries or bonuses) and can only be used once per game, the pool of minions it's worth using on is distressingly limited. Furthermore, more often than not a single free golden minion is just not impactful enough to win you a game unless you get some insane synergies with stuff like golden Brann, and even then usually his best targets are scaling minions, which means you'll have to wait even longer to fully reap its benefits. What was really holding back his Hero Power was its cost. It originally cost 4 Gold, an absurdly high cost that pretty much kills his tempo. It then got buffed to cost 3 Gold, and that didn't do much, and then to 2 Gold, where it still wasn't enough. Finally, Blizzard just decided to just make his Hero Power cost 0 Gold, which shot up his below average winrate into a good to decent mid tier hero.
• Aranna Starseeker has the Hero Power of letting you have a full 7 minions Tavern set if you refresh for 7 times. Sound amazing on paper, as it helps you to fish for low Tavern tier build and triples, but in practice the builds that she has will quickly fallen off during the mid and late game where her Hero Power start to get going. Even the buff to let it come online with 5 refreshes didn't manage to redeem her and she has been one of the worst performing hero ever since launch. She was eventually buffed to always have 7 minions in the Tavern after she refreshed 5 times to give her a chance to redeem herself. The addition of Quests and the new Nether Drake / Whelp Smuggler combo has lead her to be a discounted Ysera if she high-rolled both a decent Quest and if Dragon is in the lobby.
• In the same vein as Flurgl, Alexstrasza has one of the most polarizing win rates in the game. Her Passive Hero Power allows you to Discover 2 Dragons when you upgrade your Tavern to Tier 5. The extreme variance of the Dragons she can Discover, from build-defining ones like Kalecgos and Razorgore to completely worthless ones like a Tier 1 or 2 minion, means that the player's fate completely rests on the Dragons bestowed by the Random Number God. If she gets a good minion, she wins, but if not, the sheer tempo loss of rushing upgrades to tier 5 as soon as possible basically means she loses on the spot.
• By the time Chenvaala was added, Blizzard seems to have a decent grasp on how to balance forced tribe heroes. While Jaraxxus and Millificent can power through with bonus stats, Flurgl and Alexstrasza can sometimes high-roll into victory, and Patches and Ysera can consistently find certain minions, what does Chenvaala do? For every 3 Elementals played, you gain a 2-Gold discount on tavern upgrades. On top of the whole "lose if you don't roll your tribe minions early" problem forced tribe heroes have, Chenvaala also has a problem where her Hero Power is too slow early game because you can't buy minions fast enough to ramp upgrades early, and by the time you get to late game and can buy Elementals back-to-back, the discount is overkill and barely brings any more power to the table. Forest Warden Omu has a far superior Hero Power because it actually helps curb the tempo loss from upgrading and doesn't force you into a tribe. Chenvaala was so bad on release that she became the new worst hero in Battlegrounds. Fortunately, that didn't last too long, as she got buffed to increase the upgrade cost reduction from 2 to 3, where she's on par with the other low tier heroes.
• Despite terrorizing the constructed ladder, Illidan Stormrage didn't fair as well in this mode. His passive hero power lets his left-most and right-most minions attack at the start of combat. On paper, this lets him guaranteed attack first in every combat and get a bonus as well. In practice, it basically does nothing. Attacking first matters... somewhat, but not more than having a hero power. It's especially bad when your opponent knows you'll be throwing two attacks at them and can plan their board accordingly. The second attack is also a bit of a headache for minion placement, since you want something useful, but don't want to tuck your best minion to the last position on the board usually. Generally, all Illidan does is pop two Divine Shields then continue to a no-advantage game. For this reason, Illidan has consistently been one of the lowest-performing heroes in Battlegrounds since his inception. Even a later buff to his hero power(now the left-most and right-most minions gains +2 attack during that combat) still didn't improve him by much. It took the restructuring of minion pools to favor Beasts and Mech that managed to drag him to a decent performing hero.
• Kurtrus Ashfallen used to be a decent hero with the effect of completing a quest chain to permanently buff your minions and those on the tavern by +2/+2 depending on stage. Unfortunately, Power Creep has been pretty unkind and his 3 +2/+2 buff waves were just no longer useful when every tribe got scaling options that were far superior to what he could offer. Even his one niche (buffing key minions like baron rivendare for their protection) was overshadowed by the addition of Uther, a tier 6 neutral minion that sets a Minion's stat to 15/15. Spotting a terrible winrate and generally being a weak hero choice under most circumstances, his hero power was completely removed and replaced in the july 2023 update with Glaive Ricochet, a one-per-turn passive that, after purchasing 4 minions, lets him discover a plain copy of a minion he purchased during that turn.
• Vanndar Stormpike might have been breaking the meta and decimating other heroes in duels, but in battlegrounds he has been the one on the receiving end instead, for the most part. His hero power allows you to copy the health of one minion into another, for the next combat only. His hero power has been deemed one of the weakest for good reasons, getting unfavorable comparisons with Vol'jin, who can swap stats between minions permanently.Health alone is simply worse than just giving divine shield or reborn to that minion. And unlike Lich King or George the Fallen, his hero power has no synergy at all with any tribes or minions and is laughably weak to boot. His buddy ^note Avenge(2): give 1 health permanently to your minions is just as underpowered and slow as he is, making it little more than just a free discovery when you triple it, which doesn't help him at all and , as a result, he struggles to reach the lategame.
  • Drek'thar is just as bad as Vanndar. He has literally the same hero power and non-tribal buddy as Vanndar, except replace health with attack. The best way to make use of his hero power and buddy attack-based abilities is to play a mechs or divine shield build, but even then, there are other heroes who can make better use of mechs and divine shields than Drek'thar could.
  • Due to their equally terrible Hero Powers, both heroes were reworked in Patch 24.2, now giving all minions +1 to a stat permanently after 2 or 3 minions die in battle.
• Tamsin Roame has been one of (if not THE) worst performing battlegrounds hero since her introduction in late 2021. Her hero power, when used, triggers on next combat and destroys your lowest health minion in order to splash its stats into four others. Her first version used to cost 0 Gold but would only boost your minion's hp, while her second rework instead costed 1 gold but boosted all your board's stat based on the sacrificed minion's health and attack. Then her third and (current) version is similar to the second one, only giving the stats to 4 random minions in your board and costing 0 mana again. Unfortunately, every version of her has been underwhelming at best and atrocious at worst because other than securing the trigger of Deathrattle minions you want to die, there is little benefit: her hero power doesn't really have a significant impact on the board to justify losing a minion at ANY point in the game. If you want to trigger Deathrattles as soon as possible or good synergy with them, you are better off just playing The Lich King or Illidan instead. To make matters worse, when the buddy update arrived, she received potentially one of the worst buddies ever conceived (see below on Tribes & Minions section), which didn’t help at all and as a result, she remains on the bottom of the barrel when it comes to battleground heroes. The removal of the Buddies system and the buff to her Hero Power to give the consumed minions stats to 5 minions have finally made her a viable hero if Dragon is in the minion pool because she can grab a Tarecgosa at Tier 3 and start sacling her up with the Hero Power consuming Spawn of N'Zoth. Unfortunately, this period was shortlived as Spawn of N'zoth would be removed soon after and Tarecgosa kicked to tavern 4 instead, which made Tamsin once again a terrible hero. The May 2023 refresh brought Tarecgosa back to tier 3 along several new minion revamps, so time will tell how she will perform.
• Some heroes were just deemed unsalvageable and were kicked out of Battlegrounds:
  • Giantfin was one of the first Battlegrounds heroes to go, and for good reason. His hero power gives your minions the ability to summon a 1/1 Murloc on death, which sounds like a great effect for Murlocs... in the deck-based game modes. Because your minions in Battlegrounds are permanent until sold, Murlocs are focused more on stacking buffs than swarming foes, and their lack of in-combat scaling aside from a piddly +1 Attack on Murloc Tidecaller makes the tokens nearly useless aside from maybe pinging the occasional Divine Shield. Giantfin doesn't fare much better in other strategies, as the other tribes have better token generators and depend on their tokens having their specific tribe, which Giantfin actually harms by clogging the board with useless Murlocs.
  • King Mukla originally had a hero power that gave him a Banana (which gives a minion +1/+1) whenever he sold a Beast. Compared to heroes that get buffs for buying minions, for free, or at will, it proved horribly underwhelming and situational, since selling things for a measly +1/+1 buff is way too weak for any point in the game even if they didn't have to be one tribe specifically (as Sir Finley can attest). The hero power was eventually reworked to give him Bananas for buying Beasts, which was an improvement, but not by much. After that, Blizzard put Mukla out to pasture for a while before making his new Hero Power give Bananas in a very non-Beast-related way; Now he pays 1 Gold to gain two Bananas but give everyone else one Banana and the end of the turn. Now Mukla is considered a Joke Character more than anything else. The January 2022 buddy system update, however, sucessfully redeemed the hero thanks to his new minion buddy,Crazy Monkey ^note Give a minion +1/+1 whenever said minion is buffed by a banana, making Mukla a Lethal Joke Character
  • Trade Prince Gallywix has the hero power of adding one Gold Coin to his hand at the cost of one Coin. While he can use this to stock up on money and spend it all on one turn, it's incredibly slow. If other heroes want to save up, they can just purchase a bunch of junk minions to sell later - which has the added benefit of cycling Battlecries and potentially building a Triple Card. He's also completely outclassed by Baz'hial, who gets the same Coin power for free at the small cost of 2 health, and Rafaam, as mentioned above. Mostly, he's just a boring hero with a not-very-synergistic hero power. Needless to say, no one is scrambling to play Gallywix. He was reintroduced to the game with a completely new Hero Power that let him gain one extra gold next round for each minions he sold last round. While this only made him an above average hero, it is still a huge step up from his previous standing.
  • Sylvanas Windrunner has the Hero Power of removing a friendly minions to buff the adjacent minions by +1/+1. While the buff sounds nice on paper, she is blatantly inferior to the buff provided by Edwin (whose buff is single target and can provide a lot more than +1/+1 on a single target) and Deryl (whose buffs doesn't take away the 1 Gold it would take to sell the minion back to the Tavern and can create some ridiculous swing turns on key targets since it's not limited to once per turn). Her Hero Power also ran into the same problem as Finley: The buff is very inefficient in the early game, where minions aren't scaled very well and you need the gold from selling to refresh the Tavern or buy better minions, and low-impact in the late game. She ended up getting removed from the game, and returned much later in the Murder at Castle Nathria Mini-Set patch with a new Hero Power: pay 1 Gold to give +2/+1 to every friendly minion that died last combat, a far more Gold-efficient power than her old one.
  • Sir Finley Mrrgglton can spend 1 coin to give a random minion +1/+1, and this hero power refreshes each time he sells a minion. Unfortunately, the requirement and effect are at complete odds with one another: the buff is most impactful in the early game, at which point you won't have any spare minions to sell, and during the late game, you're probably better off just cycling through Battlecries than spamming the hero power. It doesn't help that Edwin VanCleef renders him almost entirely obsolete by virtue of having basically the same buff, only manually targeted. Sir Finley was eventually taken out then re-added with a totally new Hero Power: Discover a random Hero Power at the start of the game. This made him far more viable by giving you a second chance to fish for a good hero power if the two alternatives are bad.
  • Professor Putricide graced the bottom tier of most Battlegrounds tier lists for as long as he's existed, no matter how he was changed. In his debut, his Hero Power gave a hefty +10 Attack buff to your left-most minion, which sounds good in theory by letting you start off a combat with a huge swing... which tends to miss in all sorts of ways. More often than not, the buff will get wasted on a Taunt, wasted on a Divine Shield, wasted on a Taunt with Divine Shield, or just not roll the one-in-seven chance of hitting what you actually want it to hit, making it very rare for it to actually do anything impactful outside of minions with cleave attacks (of which there are a whopping two in all of Battlegrounds, and the first one only becomes available at Tier 4). Putricide was shelved for a bit, and returned (without even being mentioned in the patch notes) with a +20 Attack buff. Even though his greatest counter, the Nightmare Amalgam wall, disappeared and he got some synergy with Fiendish Servant, he still remained a terrible hero. Then his Hero Power was changed to let him buff any minion (but nerfing the buff back to +10), and he still sucked. Third time wasn't the charm for Putricide, and he was unceremoniously kicked out of Battlegrounds yet again. He would eventually return in early 2023 for the season 3 of Battlegrounds, with a complete new hero power: Pay four gold to craft^note  The functionality is essentially the same as Deathstalker Rexxar from the card-based modes: You will discover and select 2 times a different undead, and the final crafted card will be a combination of all the keywords, abilities and stats from the 2 undead you choose a custom undead minion to add to the hand(You can only use the hero power up to 3 times per game).
  • Lady Vashj's Hero Power transformed every minion in Bob's Tavern to a random minion tier higher whenever you upgraded your tavern tier. Not only is this Hero Power as exciting as it sounds (read: it isn't), it was worse than every other comparable Hero Power in the game. Since rerolling until you had multiple minions of your current tier before upgrading is a very bad idea, it acts like a watered down version of Nozdormu's Hero Power in practice, and even the Boring, but Practical Elise had an advantage over her in that she's at least guaranteed to find something in her upgraded tier. It also doesn't have the high roll potential that Infinite Toki or Galakrond have because the minions can only upgrade up to whatever tier you upgraded to. Sporting both a terrible average ranking and a generally uninteresting Hero Power, Lady Vashj ended up getting removed from the game. She would return much later in the pre-Murder at Castle Nathria patch with a completely different Hero Power involving Naga tribal synergy.
  • Bartendotron has a very plain Hero Power of reducing the cost of Tavern upgrades by 1. Bartendotron has been in Battlegrounds since the beginning and has long been deemed a very average hero. As Battlegrounds became faster and the gap between average and strong heroes became wide, Bartendotron just simply failed to catch up and steadily declined. What really drove the nail in his coffin on him, however, was Forest Warden Omu, whose Hero Power gave you 2 Gold whenever you upgraded your Tavern tier. The only downside to Omu's Hero Power compared to Bartendotron's was that you had slightly less flexiblility in when to upgrade, but it's a negligible downside and a straight up Power Creep over Bartendotron. Having double the upgrade discount made Omu a top tier hero and their placement on the tier list are practically mirrored. Bartendotron became redundant and was removed from the game.
  • While Nefarian was never directly changed, the changes to Battlegrounds around him has severely damaged his standing over time. In the early days, Nefarian was one of the best late-game heroes, as his Hero Power pops every one of his enemy's Divine Shield, which at the time made him the only true counter to Divine Shield/Poisonous Murlocs or Nightmare Amalgam with Annoy-o-Module attached while strengthening his own. The Dragon update was when Nefarian started falling out of favor significantly, since his Hero Power doesn't counter Nadina the Red, not to mention the addition of Unstable Ghoul meant Nefarian wasn't the only counter to Divine Shields. Then, the removal of Gentle Megasaur meant no more Divine Shield Murlocs, removing the one niche he was good against. At that point, the only thing Nefarian's Hero Power is good against are very early token boards, some mechs with an Annoy-O-Module slapped on it, Amalgadon and George the Fallen. With all of this combined, he was kicked from the Battlegrounds early November 2020. Interestingly, Bru'kan is basically an improved version of him: Not only does his Hero Power cost 0 (though it only hits 5 minions instead of 7), he can also switch to a different Hero Power (including a better scaling version of pre-buff Putricide) if he doesn't face Divine Shield-heavy compositions.
• For some heroes, a single balance change has had such a huge impact on a hero that their placement in the tier list did a complete 180:
  • Millhouse Manastorm was scrutinized immediately when he was first released. Sure, his hero power lets you buy minions for only 2 coins, but he also only started with 2 gold (meaning he needs to sell a minion to upgrade on turn 2) and he also needs 2 coins to refresh, making him way more reliant on RNG to actually get a lineup that lets him tackle the late game. His biggest problem was his incredibly awkward curve from starting with 1 less gold, which made it hard for him to keep up in tavern tiers. He had one of the lowest average placement across all regions, so he was buffed to start with 3 gold like others. This change single-handedly shot him up from one of the worst hero in the game to one of the best, suddenly giving him an overwhelming powerful early game that lets him rank up to higher tiers safely to fully abuse his hero power. He got nerfed, but instead of reverting the buff he got changed to increase the cost of tiering up by 1, which preserved his early game power but made him more difficult to scale.
  • Lord Jaraxxus's Hero Power gives every friendly Demon +1/+1. When he was first in Battlegrounds, it cost an obscene 3 Gold per turn. Jaraxxus was placed closest to the bottom not only because Hero Powers that require you to force a tribe was more luck-dependent and his Hero Power was ridiculously overpriced, but Demons were also one of the worst tribes because the existence of Nightmare Amalgam killed off Demons from the meta. After Nightmare Amalgam was removed and Demons became the top meta and Jaraxxus's Hero Power was buffed to cost 2 Gold, Jaraxxus continued to be terrible because more people picking Demons meant he has an even less chance of finding good Demons, as well as the fact the core power of Demon builds came from the Wrath Weaver/Floating Watcher combo, and more generalized heroes made better use of the comp than Jaraxxus did. The buff of his Hero Power to 1 Gold has finally managed to rescue him from the low tier to a very consistent 2nd Place hero (as long as he got Demons early).
  • Queen Wagtoggle was another hero that had an absolutely terrible hero power: for 1 coin, she gave a beast, mech, demon, and murloc a measly +1 Health. She was only just slightly better than Pyramad by the virtue of having better gold-to-stats ratio, and it was back when Menagerie builds were popular (even if there were better hero options for it). After some balance changes that nerfed Menagerie builds significantly, she fell down a few stories high from the tier list into the bottom. Her Hero Power got buffed from +1 Health to +2 Attack, which made her less terrible but not by much, and only continued to perform worse as newer and way stronger heroes rise to the top. One day, Blizzard decided to add a +1 Health buff on top of her Hero Power, which was enough to instantly shoot her up into top tier category by turning her into basically a menagerie Tirion Fordring... at which point Blizzard eventually booted her from Battlegrounds for pretty much the same reason as Tirion. The Forged in the Barrens patch has returned her to the game with the nerf to only give minions +1/+1, allowing her to finally become balance since she can't scale her early as efficiently like before.
  • Galakrond's Hero Power transformed a minion in Bob's Tavern into a random minion a tier higher for 1 gold. While this just makes him sounds like a worse version of Infinite Toki, if you freeze the minion, you can transform it again next turn to something beyond your tavern tier. Unfortunately, you are extremely dependent on what you even get out your Hero Power, and if you get some generic non-synergistic minion out of it, your efforts are wasted. Even if you're only upgrading something right before the end of turn and the beginning of your next turn, you're still sacrificing Gold and a reroll to do so. His Hero Power got a tiny buff where it froze the transformed minion, but letting him roll 2-4 extra minions per turn hardly made a difference. While most low tier heroes had their ups and downs, Galakrond was sitting firmly in the bottom for about his entire career. Once his Hero Power was finally buffed to cost 0 gold, it predictably turned him into a top tier hero, so powerful that he was removed until Blizzard could figure out how to balance him better. The Forged in the Barrens launch patch return him to the hero pool and reverting his Hero Power back to its original state but now let him Discover which minion he will roll into, return him to a below average performing hero.
  • Varden Dawngrasp gained notoriety on its original, release version, and for all the wrong reasons. Originally, the hero power was a passive that adds a random frozen copy of a minion in the tavern when you refresh. On paper, it was supposed to help you secure triples much more easly. In practice, it was much worse than Zephrys in every imaginable way. You could get 2 copies of a given minion and never actually find a 3rd one, while , if you played Zephrys and got his buddy, it could guarantee the discover of a 2nd copy of a unique minion you own while his hero power combines 2 copies into a triple. Varden doesn't guarantee you will get a 3rd copy, and there aren't many minions where you will benefit from having a 2nd copy, not helped by the way the hero power originally worked. You still needed to purchase the copy AND you had no way to control which minion gets copied with Varden's hero power. Varden's buddy didn't help matters, since all it does is give stats to the copy based on your tavern tier. The combination of an absolutely unreliable and weak hero power along a buddy only giving a minor stat boost to the copied minion essentially made Varden one of the worst heroes you could realistically pick (Only Tamsin Roame was comparable in its badness). That is, until early April 2022 where Varden got a significant rework: now the hero power was guaranteed to only copy the highest tier minion in the Tavern. This change single-handedly made Varden one of the strongest heroes in the Battlegrounds rotation, much like Millhouse, Maiev and the Lich King did when they first got reworked. With their new hero power, you were now capable of freezing a minion selection with a desirable high tier minion (and purchase the other undesirable choices of same tier to secure the hero power copies what you want), and easly secure buffed up copies of minions like Amalgadons, Brann Bronzebeard, Nomi and Baron Rivendare, which also allows them to push their own wheight during late-game matches as well.
  • Pyramad was an unambiguously terrible hero by most standards. Its hero power originally spent 1 coin to give a random minion +2 Health. The combination of an almost inconsequential buff with RNG-induced unreliability makes the hero a very unappealing choice under most scenarios; if you have a coin to spare, you're generally better off just rerolling. Pyramad eventually got removed, but returned after a little while and got buffed to give 3 Health... which is a marginal improvement but not enough to escape the lower end of the tier lists, and he was buffed again to 4 health. Apparently, the dev team's "let's keep buffing Pyramad 1 point at a time until he becomes playable" philosophy seems to have worked at first, and he became decent when played along mechs. However the removal of Micromachine from the minion pool proved to be absolutely brutal to him, as it is one of the only minions early game that his Hero Power has great synergy with, and he was kicked down the bottom tier once again. Eventually, the devs just made his hero power cost 0 gold and let the player choose the minion,but also reverting it back to 2 health (and future uses increases by +1 for each turn you don't use the hero power). This change successfully made Pyramad viable, giving him a powerful hero power in the early and midgame that remains useful in the late game and can make the difference for key minions survival. Unfortunately, this new iteration proved a bit too strong, and was especially broken when used to buff the health of poisonous minions, which gave scam builds a incredibly strong late-game. As a result, he was nerfed in late January 2023, by reducing his targeted buff to 1 health baseline(and still increases by +1 on future uses for each turn you don't use the hero power).

Tribes & Minions

• Even in Battlegrounds, The Boogeymonster can't escape the bottom of the tier list. His effect of attacking into things to gain stats is far more useful in this mode than it is in actual Hearthstone, but it's still overall way too minor. He only has middling baseline stats, meaning he won't be attacking into and killing much come lategame. His effect only takes place during combat, so it doesn't stack. He's also extraordinarily hard to buff, meaning you can't even scale him. Even if he does attack into something and survive, he only gains a measly +2/+2 anyway, which won't help him beat over or survive much more. The only hero that can use him effectively is Tirion Fordring thanks to his non-tribal synergy, but even then, there's better things to put on the board. Unsurprisingly, when several of the more "boring" minions were cut from Battlegrounds, The Boogeymonster was one of them. He would eventually return in a completely new iteration called "The Boogie Monster" with what's a essentially better Theotar effect(see below for more details).
• Demon builds have an extremely straightfoward gameplan; get an early Wrath Weaver or Soul Juggler, get a bunch of cheap (token-spawning) demons, and try to knock out other players before they can outscale you. In either case, Demon builds rarely ever finish 1st place because their power level plateaus very hard. Wrath Weaver builds, while powerful early, can't afford more than one or two losses as it severely hampers how much they can scale, and while Soul Juggler builds eat early token-based board for breakfast, as soon as the opponent starts getting minions that can take more than two or three hits they become far less effective. While Demons used to be the premier midrange build - especially back when Floating Watcher was at Tier 3 and there were no Divine Shield/Poisonous/Taunt Nightmare Amalgams everywhere to counter them - other tribes began to catch up in power while not requiring sacrificing their life points to do well. As a result, while Demons are still capable of being a Top 4 finish build, they utterly fail to match up to any other builds late game. The strategy of rushing to 4th place was slowly phased out over time as the tribe gained cards that shifted away power from two central cards, while also giving them more health to work with with Armor tiers and Kathra'natir^note He's almost identical to Mal'ganis but without the +2 Health effect, but is available two tiers earlier.
• Pirates are the weakest tribe out there. Why? Because outside of Salty Looter and the independently strong Gold Grubber, they have next to no minions to scale their stats before combat. They rely heavily on attacking first and buffing their units in battle with Ripsnarl Captain and Dread Admiral Eliza, which only makes them great to clean up tokens mostly. If the player gets multiple Cap'n Hoggarr, they can buy a ton of Pirates, but the scaling still falls flat compared to Murlocs, Dragons and Elementals, while Beasts with Cave Hydras and Goldrinn only need one good cleave to end the battle against Pirates. Not to mention, Pirates have next to no defensive measures against Poison. The only good Pirate late game Composition is the nicknamed "Exodia Pirate" comp that abuse Eliza and Scallywag with support from Baron Rivendare and Khadgar to both ping off Divine Shield and build a gigantic temporary board. However, the Addition of Peggy Britlebone and Power Creep over time made Pirates much stronger with better scaling options. In fact, Pirates were a bit too good by the 2021-2023 meta, with Cap'n Hoggar builds easly hitting top 4 or even first place, and Poisonous match-ups were often offset by Savvy players abusing the infinite gold to grab a golden baron and a golden Selfless Defender to protect their board and win. As a result, the May 2023 refresh got rid of Cap'n Hoggar for being too powerful both as a infinite gold engine and in pure pirates builds. Blizzard instead created a bunch of new Pirate minions to try move away from cards that are too centralizing and game-defining. Only time will tell if pirates are viable in the new meta refresh.
• The January 2022 update brought a new Battleground system where heroes eventually get a new minion to aid them with their game plan as well as helping with hero power synergy: Buddies. With that said, a few ones left a lot to be desired:
  • Tentacle of C'thun, from C'thun itself, has been widely derided as the single worst minion in the history of battlegrounds and potentially the worst buddy as soon as buddies went live. He gains a +1/+1(+2/+2 if golden) whenever other minions get buffs, which would be decent if not for the fact the buffs works only for next combat. And even with that taken into account, its entirely possible for C'thun's hero power to accidentally buff the tentacle directly, in which case he doesn't gains additional buffs as the tentacle only does when other minions get the buffs, wasting the buffs. To top this trainwreck, he's a non-tribal, meaning it's really difficult to buff (as his +1/+1 buffs don't cut it in late game) and suceptible to minions that actually scales higher than he could ever dream of (dragons and elementals, for example) as well as poisonous/divine shield. Ultimately, you are better off just selling him as soon as you get better minions that actually benefit your game plan since keeping him around is derimetral to buffing your other board minions with C'thun hero power.
  • Monstrosity, Tamsin Roame's minion, didn't fare much better than tentacle of C'thun. He is a 0/12 minion that gains attack equal to minions that die before him during combat. Unfortunately, he is also non-tribal, which means its hard to manually buff him or make him anything better than a beatstick. And to make matters worse, his lack of divine shield or anything else than being a 0/12 that gains attack makes him a very frail target,suceptible to any poisonous or divine shield minion with over 12 attack under the sunlight, and thus utterly fails to help the struggling Tamsin with making good use of her hero power and board composition. He was given a buff when he returned to the Battleground by giving him an Undead tag, finally allow him to be able to be buffed in his Health by something like Lady Deathwhisper.
  • Carriel Roame's buddy, Captain Fairmount, gives a +1/+1(+2/+2 if golden) to 3 minions at the end of your turn. Even disregarding the randomness of the buffs (they can hit a minion you are about to sell), they are way too slow to really help much. It's okay in the early-mid game but it becomes quickly irrelevant as the other heroes and their boards catch up. For comparison, King Mukla's minion, Crazy Monkey, gives a extra 1/1+ to a minion whenever he is buffed by bananas, which actually turns Mukla into a surprisingly versatile character in buffing key minions and offers great scaling that stays relevant in the late-game, while Fairmount fails to actually aid Carriel's rather weak hero power to perform.
  • Pyramad's buddy, Titanic Guardian, gains health whenever another minion gains health. Sounds good in paper, but in practice it suffers the same issue as C'thun's buddy: namely, it does nothing if Pyramad's (already weak) hero power buff lands on him. it's also non-tribal, making it very hard to buff, and while it can gain decent health in comps that buffs the board on the tavern (for example, murlocs), its little more than a hp sponge suceptible not only against high-attack hitters, but also poisonous. Moreover, giving it taunt doesn't do anything if your opponent knows and prepares a poisonous minion to destroy him in anticipation as he has no protection against poisonous or divine shield whatsoever.
• The return of Buddies for a while in early 2023 have unfortunately left some heroes in the dust with their useless buddies:
  • Captain Hooktusk's Buddy Raging Contender have a useless effect of letting her pick from 3 options when using her Hero Power instead of 2. Even when placed at the cheapest possible Tavern Tier, the Buddy is still basically just a Discover a high tier minion option. It was so useless and Hooktusk's Hero Power was so Tribe dependent that the developers replaced it with a completely new version: The new version of the Buddy allow her to gain Gold based on the Tavern of the minion she used her Hero Power on (with the Golden version allow her to gain double the amount of Gold of that minion). Suddenly Hooktusk became one of the most versatile Hero due to the amount of Gold she can cheat out.
  • E.T.C. Band Manager's Buddy Talent Scout allow him to make another Buddy Golden, which theoretically would go well with his Hero Power to Discover another Buddy. But the problem it is a Tier 5 Buddy, meaning by the time he wants to use it on a good Buddy with continuous effect, the effect is low impact or if E.T.C didnt get a good composition, he is most likely to die already and the Golden version basically has the same effect as the regular version. It receive an enormous buff to let it be a Tier 3 minion.
  • Enhanco-O-Mechano's Buddy Enhaco-O-Medico effect allow the minions that buff by his Hero Power (along with some additional minions) to receive extra stats. It turns his playstyle even more into a Luck-Based Mission that it already is, where failing to make good use of the stats in the early game makes the buddy useless and is low-impact in the late-game, and is hated by pretty much everyone as a result. Even with its buff to a Tier 1 minion still didn't let it escape its low win rate.
• During the four months the Buddy system was in play, all of Tavern Tier 2 became this. The need to get Buddies as soon as possible along with the insane power creep of Tier 1 minions led to many Heroes adopting the playstyle of staying at Tier 1 until turn 4 then double leveling up to Tier 3 and tripling up for Tier 4 minions. The only heroes who regularly went to Tier 2 were due to the insane synergy certain Tier 2 minions had with their playstyle: Chenvaala (her Hero Power allowed her to offset the tempo loss and Party Elemental's stat buff is essential for Elementals), the Lich King and Deathwing (a majority of Deathrattles and token generators are Tier 2) and Ambassador Faelin (whose Hero Power gives him a free minion at Tier 2). With Buddies currently gone, it seems likely that most Heroes will go back to using the regular Tavern upgrade curve, meaning more Tavern Tier 2 minions will enter play.
• Tea Master Theotar was added with the Quest update and was immediately thrown into this trope. He is a Tier 6 6/6 minion that give +2/+2 to 3 friendly minions with different minion type for each tribeless minion you played. Not only his buff is extremely disappointing compare to the high tavern tier he is in, he require to buy tribeless minion - possibly the worst type of minion to go with a menagerie composition since you are strapped for board space compare to the much more generalist Brann and Lightfang comp. And that not even mention that if the tribal line up is bad for Menagerie (example: No Mechs or Beast to grab Divine Shield and/or cleave minions) or you just simply not get lucky to pick up specific scaling stand alone minions, his buff is worthless and fail to keep up with the other composition. The only real synergy he has is with Treasure Seeker Elise - a tier 4 minion. The addition of more minions that goes well with him has raised his profile substansally, especially potent with the addition of Mantis Queen - a Neutral minion that encourage Menagerie build and Leeroy Jenkin - a Glass Canon Neutral minion that can immediately snipe an enemy minion through Divine Shield and cleave. Despite this, Theotar was still considered an average minion and simply not as good as any of the other pure warband buffers(like Ragnaros, Charlga or Murkeye), being too niche to work a late-game Menagerie build. As a result, he was removed in the May 2023 refresh.
  • Interestingly, The Boogie Monster, a new Tier 6 version of The Boogiemonster added on the same refresh that removed Theotar, is considered a better Theotar by virtue of having a less restrictive requisite (only requires to play minions of specific tiers(starts at tier 1 and goes up by 1 for each time the effect activates, caps at Tier 6) to activate the effect, buffing all the minions on your board instead of just a maximum of 3(albeit buff is +1/+2 instead) and being fully workable in a menagerie board without strapping the user for board room or awkwardly doing nothing if the player failed to find tribeless minions.
• Kalecgos, Arcane Aspect is a tier 6 4/12 Dragon that give your Dragons +1/+1 each time you play a Battlecry minion. His synergy with Nadina was incredible when he first came out to counter Poisonous Murlocs. However, he was hit extremely hard with Power Creep, with the other tribes added later in the game (most notably Pirates, Elemental, Naga and Undead) have much more powerful late game buffs while still offer more utility than just Divine Shield Nadina. Dragons as a tribe succeed in spite of him due to Tarecgosa and Chronormu, not because of. He was given an enormous buff when season 4 came about, allow his buff to activate whenever you trigger a Battlecry, allowing him to give out way more stats by keeping a Brann Bronzebeard in your warband.
• Rock Rock is a new tier 6 elemental addition in the May 2023 refresh with the effect of increasing your minion's attack by +1 each turn whenever you play a elemental, switching to health the next turn. Generally speaking, Rock Rock is seen as a poor man's Lil' Rag...and it's more like spitting on Lil' Rag's grave. While lil' Rag has been a good elemental scaling alternative to Nomi that buffed another minion based on the tiers of elementals you play, Rock Rock does a worse job in general with a extremely weak effect for a tier 6 minion. Moreover, since elementals still have Nomi, they don't need Rock Rock at all and this minion was immediately mocked on the May 2023 refresh due to how underwhelming it is, and Blizzard later increased his effect to buff attack +2.

Others

• The second half of 2022 saw the release of a new Battleground season, along a new replacement for Buddies: Quests. While several of this immediately broke the Battlegrounds meta with busted rewards, some of them were not so lucky, as the next rewards have been considered some of the worst ones:
  • Alter Ego gives even Tier minions in Bob’s Tavern have +7/+7 (and switches to giving odd minions +7/+7 every other turn). While this reward seems good on paper, in practice it falls short in about every account. It's a okay reward in the mid-game but it loses relevance and power as the game goes on, and it barely buys you time to transition into a end-game comp, assuming you actually do it quick enough. It can help you obtain beefed up copies of minions you want them to live, like Baron Rivendare or Khadgar, but it pales compared to several other quest reward( not to mention that Theotar’s Parasol^note Give your right-most minion Stealth until next turn and +8 Health at the end of each turn exists and is a strictly better quest reward to protect key minions like Baron).
  • Menagerie Mayhem a quest reward that gives, the end of your turn, +1 Attack to your minions for each friendly minion type, has not seen much success either, and especially because the amount of attack you get is both awful and low-impact. As heroes like Putricide and Drek'thar proved, increased attack is not going to really help you unless you run mechs or divine shields, which even then it doesn't help because this reward requires you to run a Menagerie builds, who aren't seen often with divine shields unless they run specific minions from the tavern pool or a nightmare amalgam and, more often than not, will inevitably ignore this reward if offered in favor of something thats actually helpful to their comp in the mid and late-game. Even in the most divine-shield filled Menagerie board, you are better off with literally almost any other quest reward than this one. When quests returned in early 2024, Menagenie would have its own effect changed to give +1/+1 to your minions for each friendly minion type at the end of each turn, giving the reward a much needed buff to help it keep up with the other rewards. The relatively recent addition of Drakkari Enchanter (a T5 neutral minion that makes it so end of effect turns triggers twice, thrice if the Enchanter is golden) gives this reward a incredible synergy that would make the long-gone Brann+Lightfang proud.
  • Teal Tiger Sapphire gives minions in Bob’s Tavern have +1/+1 for each time it was Refreshed, but it resets on end of turn. The only comp that could theorically see use of this reward are Demons, but then you realize you could run Alter Ego instead, which doesn't require you to spend gold in refreshes or really, any other quest reward that brings something to the table, instead of a minor stat-boost to whatever is in the tavern that doesn't give Demons protections to Posion or divine-shield, their worst matchups. It's also an absolute worthless reward if Demons are not in the lobby or you are not running them, as for the other tribes its not giving you any real advantage at all. Tellingly, this was one of the quest rewards that did not return when quests were added back in early 2024.
• The late 2023 refresh for Battlegrounds introduced a new mechanic thats always active in all lobbies: Anomalies. All of them are meant to give a unique experience as you play, and while many of them ended up warping the game, quite a few ended up being underwhelming or instead creating problematic interactions that rendered tribes or heroes completely useless. To list the most underwhelming or problematic ones:
  • Big League makes all players start on Tier 3 and makes it so Tier 1 and 2 minions do not show up in the tavern. This resulted in Demons ending up unplayable because of the playstyle requiring Tier 1 Wrath Weavers(deals 1 damage to the user when they play a demon but gives the Weaver +2/+1) and Tier 2 soul rewinder(any damage the player takes is undone and buffs the rewinder's hp by 1) to actually mitigate their self-inflicted damage for buffs and fight other tribes at all. As most Demons now require the player to take damage to gain stats or activate effects(Imposing Percussionist, Floating Watcher and Tichondrius to name a few), the lack of rewinder effectively results in most Demon minions shredding the player's health without any way to get it back, which is suicidal in a mode where any damage you take from players cannot be undone at all. To top it all, this anomaly frequently resulted in tons of Rocket-Tag Gameplay, where heroes with low health/such as Gallywix and Lich Baz'hial dying fast should they lose matches and fail to catch up soon enough. This led Blizzard to buff everyone's effective health by 10 in a later update and banning demons from showing up in a lobby with Big League active.
  • Overseer's Orb anomaly refresh a player's tavern offerings with random minions of the most common type the players have in their board. Easily one of the most underwhelming anomalies, the Orb rarely actually brings something useful. As there's no highroll potential or criteria when it comes to choosing the minions to give on a refresh, you can end up as often with a refresh full of low-tier minions that adds nothing actually useful to your warband and thus force you to use gold to manually refresh.
  • Prudence of Amitus sounds interesting in theory: Any unspent gold carries over to the next turn, and you get 1 extra gold if your unspent gold was 5 or higher the previous turn. In practice, this anomaly has the least impact of all. Because of the way Battlegrounds play, you are generally better off using any spare gold you have by buying minions or refreshing the tavern to try find something useful.
  • Fortitude of Khaz'goroth makes it so your left-most and right-most minions will have their hp values updated to the highest of the two during each end of turn. This anomaly is every bit as exciting as it sounds(it isn't), and has almost no application under most circumstances during the game. In the early and mid-game, the extra health bonus is fairly mild unless you run demons or pirates using Lovesick Balladist, and its low-impact in the late-game where most minions have enough attack to render the health bonus moot. It's saying something that Blizzard realized how weak this anomaly was and reduced the chance for it to appear in any lobby.

Mercenary

• Old Murk Eye is a Caster Murloc Mercenary that focus on buffing his fellow Murloc by +3/+5. The problem is that there is only 2 other Murloc Mercenaries and one of them is a Caster, which mean that two out of three heroes he support are way too squishy to survive to being buffed by his Hero Power. What worse is that he is the only hero to summon Murloc that the other two heroes rely on for buff but the Hero Power that do that is on a 1 turn cooldown, leading to the entire tribe being clunky and slow to play. He spot the lowest performance of all Mercenary in PvP.

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