Hearthstone Battlegrounds players argue whether Kooky Chemist’s interactions are intended or if they should be fixed. What do you think?
After the Grease Bot ban, Hearthstone Battelgrounds players still have something to be afraid of, Kooky Chemist interactions. Hearthstone introduced Kooky Chemist to Battlegrounds a little more than a month ago with Patch 23.6, and it has been breaking the game ever since. Let’s recap all the abusive interactions Kooky Chemist has in Hearthstone Battlegrounds, and then you can decide if they are bugs or features.
Evolving Chromawing, Kooky Chemist's first victim
Only three days after Kooky Chemist entered Battlegrounds, Hearthstone devs had to react to it due to a powerful interaction with Evolving Chromawing. Originally the dragon duplicated its attack with every tavern upgrade.
It wasn’t too big of a deal since it had low health and couldn’t value trade much. However, with Kooky Chemist, the tavern 1 dragon became a powerhouse. This strategy proved to be so effective that the dev team decided to remove Evolving Chromawing from the minion pool until they were able to rework it into a less toxic minion.
Evolving Chromawing has been temporarily removed due to its power level with Kooky Chemist, but it will return with some changes.
With Hearthstone patch 24.0, Evolving Chromawing returned to Battlegrounds in a form that wouldn't cause any problems with Kooky Chemist. However, this only fixed part of the problem.
Kooky Chemist broken interactions in Hearthstone Battlegrounds
Chromawing was not the only powerful (and problematic) interaction with Kooky Chemist. There are also other two Hearthstone Battlegrounds abusive strategies that are not flagged as bugs but as “features”, regardless of how toxic and counterintuitive they look.
The most popular of these Hearthstone Battlegrounds exploits is the interaction between Kooky Chemist and Blood Gems. While the Blood Gems per se don’t create any problem, the possibility of stealing Blood Gems with Necrolyte is an entirely different thing. How does this work? Hearthstone Battlegrounds pro-player and streamer RDU explains clearly how this Kooky Chemist “feature” works at the end of this video.
That is right. When you swap stats with Kooky Chemist, you can then steal the Blood Gems with Necrolyte without losing anything from the original minion. The perfect crime. This Kooky Chemist interaction is so broken that JeefHS, a Hearthstone Battlegrounds pro-player took the challenge to make the biggest Shifter Zerus record.
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Other Kooky Chemist Hearthstone Battlegrounds broken interactions
While you might think that what we have mentioned is already worth a ban, there is still more. CarryPotter, a Spanish Hearthstone Battlegrounds streamer, explains another Kooky Chemist “feature”, this time with Nomi.
What happens here is that if you swap the stats of an Elemental in Bob’s Tavern who is buffed by Nomi’s effect, at the start of your tourn, the game will reapply Nomi’s buff. This is because, after Kooky Chemist stats swaps, Hearthstone Battlegrounds treats them as base stats, and applies buffs on top of them.
Will Hearthstone fix this?
The question that arises is if these interactions are healthy for the game. Regardless if these Hearthstone Battlegrounds interactions are a bug or a feature, they look abusive and somewhat game-defining. These problems have been happening for a while and considering that the devs didn’t remove the minion with Grease Bot, it seems that this isn’t a priority right now.
Will Hearthstone remove Kooky Chemist or balance it in the next Hearthstone Battlegrounds patch in a few weeks? Will the devs tweak how the interactions work? Hard to tell. What we do know is that these strategies are fair game for the $50k Lobby Legends qualifiers happening this weekend.
Stay tuned to Esports.gg for more Hearthstone Battlegrounds news and updates. See you next time, in Bob’s Tavern.
